


Annika: Part Three

by CRebel



Series: Annika Northman [3]
Category: True Blood (TV)
Genre: Coming of Age, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:18:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CRebel/pseuds/CRebel
Summary: Annika has learned a great deal about herself in the year since Sookie's disappearance, resulting in a darker worldview and an ever-present, increasing tension in her relationship with Eric. But with the emergence of a coven in Shreveport - as well as Sookie's return - Annika is thrust into a new environment that will compel her to reevaluate her guardian, herself, and what she wants in life.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing of *True Blood.*

**July 2009**

The song is by Katy Perry. I know because this time last year I liked her music, and I can still recognize her voice, though this is a new song that I've never heard. My musical tastes have since undergone a change.

The other kids, however, like Katy Perry – or, the girls do, anyway. Layla and Cassie, a pair of bottle-blonde cheerleaders in tiny shorts. They dance around the gravestones, their shadows thrashing and stretching long in the afternoon sunlight as they mouth the words, faces contorting, each desperate to out-silly the other. CJ, sitting at the base of the tree to my right, keeps tugging at his ball cap and calling out comments he thinks are either flirty or clever. Dylan, too – closer to me – has said a couple of things over the music, but just a couple. Mostly he's stayed quiet, glancing my way every few seconds to check if I'm enjoying myself. I feel him do it but never look back at him, not once. I just sip my beer and brush my fingers back and forth over the engraved granite stone beside me.

I find it fascinating, the stone. I didn't pick this piece of the cemetery as a gathering place, no, the others did, I imagine because it's a particularly secluded area – trees all around – and because they think it's funny that this grave is here. This empty, empty grave, designated for a person every one of them has seen walking and talking. Maybe a lot. He's the real man about town these days, as I understand it.

 _WILLIAM THOMAS COMPTON,_ is what the stone says. The name, and that he was a beloved husband and father, and a brave soldier, too. It's a fine – what's the word? – _epitaph_. Outdated, though. Oh, the phrases I could add, and _would_ add, given the chance. _King of Louisiana_ would _not_ make the cut, of course.

Actually, it might. It would probably annoy Eric, at least a little.

I take my hand from the stone and grab my can of beer, which I drain and toss aside before falling onto my back, tangling my fingers in the grass. I have to look past branches and leaves to see the sky. The _conflicted_ sky. It wants to be blue, but oh, it can't seem to shake a stubborn patch of grey clouds, grey clouds that twist towards the sun as if they have a plan to snuff it out once and for all.

I've had two beers since we got here, an hour or so ago. I can feel the alcohol in my blood, feel it seeping into my muscles, nudging away the fears and the desires and the _everything else_ – and there is so much, so much – of my companions, my _friends,_ nudging it all away . . . but just that, just _nudging_. I've found that having a couple of drinks is more or less the same as taking one of my pills. Well, no – the effect of alcohol doesn't last as long, and alcohol makes me even dumber than the pills do. What I mean by _more or less the same_ is that a couple of drinks and one of my pills both only kind-of help with invading emotions of other people, only protect the feeling part of me in a halfhearted way. The single pill _used_ to do more, but not lately, no . . . because I'm getting more _powerful._ I'm getting more powerful, and I'm so, so lucky for it.

Whatever. I have a few more hours until sunset. That's plenty of time to have another couple of beers before I cross the short distance to Sookie's house – excuse me, the house that _used to be_ Sookie's – where I can shower off the beer-and-cigarette smell before Dylan takes me back to Jessica and Hoyt's on the back of his four-wheeler. I hate riding the four-wheeler. It's loud, it's bumpy, and I don't trust Dylan. But you have to make do with whatever resources are at your disposal.

The song ends. I don't look, but I hear Layla and Cassie melt over each other.

"Oh my God, I love you so much," says Layla – no, Cassie.

"I love you, too. You're, like, such a dork, though, oh my God."

"I know, right? I'm the biggest dork ever, like, people don't even know . . ."

"I think you're both dorks," CJ says, because he can't stand for a conversation to go on too long without his input, especially not one between Cassie and Layla. He's a muscular, ruddy-looking guy, CJ. I'm told he plays basketball for the junior team at Bon Temps High School – "junior" meaning students in grades six through nine. Or maybe seven through nine, I don't remember. The point is, CJ's an athlete with an okay face and broad shoulders, and these qualities, it seems, are enough to make both Layla and Cassie want him. CJ only wants Cassie, though. She's prettier, more assertive, and I feel CJ's thoughtless, tingling, truly disgusting desire every time she brushes against him. But I also feel his ego expanding every time the girls are together around him, competing for his attention with their blatant methods. CJ's not a total idiot, and he likes being fought over more than he likes Cassie. At least for now.

You notice these things, when you're psychic. Or, you know. When you spend a fair amount of time with a group but barely speak while doing so.

Cassie lowers beside CJ, leaning against his arm as she scrolls through her iPod, connected by a tangled white wire to a small, portable speaker decorated with plastic eyes – _googly_ eyes, they're called. "Sorry, Annie," she says coolly, turning down the song the iPod jumped to on its own. "I know you don't like pop."

"I _do_ like pop," I tell the cheerleader, who happens to be a massive bitch. "It just has to be _good_ pop."

Dylan mimes throwing something at Cassie. "Burn."

I sigh.

"Nah, Annie's too good for this American shit," CJ says as Layla bends over beside him, reaching into our box of beer – _her_ box, technically, albeit a stolen one. She hands a can to CJ, who accepts it without a word, jerking his chin at me in the meantime. "She needs her fancy Swiss music."

"Swedish," I mutter.

"Huh?"

" _Swedish_ music. Not Swiss." It isn't worth pointing out to CJ that I've never specified my musical preferences, European or otherwise, to him or anyone here. " _Swiss_ refers to things from Switzerland. I'm from Sweden. So, _Swedish._ "

CJ cracks open his beer. "'Kay, but it's all Scand'navia, right?"

I close my eyes, regret every choice I've ever made, and roll up along my spine to stand. I turn my back on CJ, on all of them, and walk away as I dip into the pocket of my coat – my black wool coat, a thigh-brushing style Eric bought for me at the beginning of the year, when we were in Italy, before I decided I hated him. Summer in Louisiana gets far too hot for a coat like this, but I like having pockets to hide things in, so I make up for the extra layer with a remarkably slutty ensemble . . . Shorts as tiny as the cheerleaders', a midriff-baring tank top. Of course, I can't do anything to make up for the fact that this coat is too nice, _far_ too nice for this occasion – or, non-occasion.

From my pocket I draw a crushed box of cigarettes. Pall Malls, the kind CJ's dad smokes, the kind CJ steals for himself and his friends. In my case, he gives me entire boxes in exchange for the occasional bottle of very cheap liquor.

_Yes, Eric, I stole from you and Pam. But only the cheap stuff. So, you know – no big deal._

He would kill me. For that, for other things. He would absolutely, utterly kill me.

Oh, well.

I lean against a tree a short distance from the others and light a cigarette with a lighter – the kind called _Zippo_ – I found at Sookie's. Or, whatever, _that house._ Eric's house, which used to be Sookie's. Which _would_ be Sookie's, if she weren't probably dead. Eric doesn't think she's dead, true. But I don't care what Eric thinks. So.

I'm not overly fond of the smell of cigarette smoke, but I like the vibrations it sends through my brain. I take one long drag, then another, and the smoke wraps me up like we're old friends.

I feel Dylan come up behind me, though he doesn't speak right away. "Wanna beer?" He holds it over my shoulder before I can say anything back, so I just take it. I do want one, anyway. I suppose. After my cigarette.

As Dylan inches closer, CJ calls, "Annie, I thought you liked dead people!"and Layla laughs too loud. And Dylan, my knight in shining armor, shoots back that CJ's a dumbass before leaning down to me, licking his lips. He does that too much. It's a bad habit.

"Hey, we could go for a walk, if you want." His breath is hot and full of beer. "If you'd rather. You don't seem to be havin' alotta fun here, so . . ."

I consider this. I don't think I've really done anything, or _not_ done something, Dylan could reasonably interpret as a signal that I'm not having fun. Or, rather, less fun than usual. I'm pretty sure I've been acting the same way I've acted every time I've been out with these kids since the day Dylan came up to me in the Bon Temps grocery store, maybe six weeks ago, while I was waiting for Hoyt to pay for milk. Meaning I've acted bored. Quiet. Bitter. Acted, in other words, exactly how these kids expect me to act. How they _want_ me to act. I am, after all, a freak – the girl who lives with vampires. But I'm a little, pretty freak, nonthreatening enough for my freakiness to be fascinating.

Plus, I have regular access to vast amounts of alcohol. So I'm a valuable friend to have, if you're a teenage delinquent. Or trying to be.

Dylan coughs a little. "Annie?"

I raise the cigarette to my lips. "I don't know what you're talking about, Dylan. I'm having a great time." I draw smoke into my mouth and look out at the cemetery, because it's better than looking at Dylan. It's a nice place, really, this cemetery. Monuments scatter the earth, monuments from all across the past century, some of the older ones wrapped in vines stemming from the plentiful trees. I imagine it's very peaceful here before we show up.

In the corner of my eye, Dylan pounds his fist into his palm, once, twice, thrice. Probably licking his lips all the while. Poor Dylan. He's on the basketball team with CJ but, from what I gather, isn't so highly valued by his peers. It's surprising, I guess. Dylan's tall, he has a good smile, his hair is thick and dark and well-suited for a simple, tousled look. But he doesn't know what to do with himself, Dylan. He wants to be liked, wants it so very much, but doesn't know what for. So he tries everything, jumping from funny to charming to rowdy to tough to solemn. Like a frog, from boiling pot to boiling pot.

It's pathetic.

And now, now this _pathetic_ boy is taking my free hand, which is the hand farthest from him, meaning his arm stretches across my torso in the process. He clenches my fingers as if trying to shape them into something, and his hand, oh, his hand is so _damp_. I can't get used to damp hands, human hands – at least not on other people. Mine is the only human body I've had extensive contact with in years, so I'm used to my _own_ sweaty palms, but someone else's? That's an entirely different thing.

"Hey, let's go for a walk," Dylan murmurs in a low tone I'm sure he learned from a movie. "Just you'n me. We could, like, sit and talk somewhere."

 _And I could jam my tongue into your mouth again,_ I imagine him saying. _And maybe you'll even, you know,_ like _it this time?_

And who knows? Maybe I would.

But I doubt it.

I twist my hand free, open my mouth to brush him off, and . . . that's when a beat starts up behind me, a beat I know well. I turn my ear towards the speaker to make sure I'm hearing correctly, then murmur, "That's more like it," as Layla tells Cassie this song is like, a _million_ years old, and Cassie says she knows, _right?_ , but it's still good, swear to God . . .

"Oh, yeah." Dylan nods. "Yeah, this song's great . . ." His eyes creep downwards, then, because I've started swaying with the music, and I guess he likes how that looks. My twelfth year has given my body a bit of curve – made my hips wider than my waist, at least, made my chest merit an A-cup bra. But that's not a lot, I know. And my coat is currently hiding most of me anyway. But I guess the tank top and shorts show Dylan enough, because he keeps watching me move. And me, I let him watch, let him get whatever he gets from whatever he sees, while the song sweeps through the graveyard and Michael Jackson starts to sing.

" _ **As he came into the window/Was a sound of a crescendo . . ."**_

And that voice, so familiar to me these days, reaches into my mind and opens a box and releases a second voice, this one familiar, too – more familiar than it should be, really, since Jack and I only spoke a few times. But his words spring easily from my memory, quick and quiet and almost (ironically) alive in their own right, and I close my eyes and sway and sway and listen.

_Michael Jackson – you ever listen to Michael Jackson? Put him on the list. As a matter of fact, put him at the top. For cultural relevance alone, he should be at the top._

" _ **He came into her apartment/He left the bloodstains on the carpet . . ."**_

 _Goddamn, that bastard could put on a show. The kind of show that just . . . took you. Made you something else for a while, whatever he wanted you to be. And you didn't care, you didn't even notice, because_ you _didn't exist anymore, not so long as he was on the stage. Now that,_ a leanbh, _is_ _a fucking artist._

" _ **She ran underneath the table/He could see she was unable . . ."**_

CJ says something, _Oh, shit_ , maybe, and God, I wish he would shut up for once.

" _ **So she ran into the bedroom/She was struck down, it was her doom . . ."**_

Dylan grabs my arm, and I tense and open my eyes and start to yank myself away – but then his emotion rolls over me, shortly followed by the emotions of Cassie and Layla and CJ, but it's all one emotion, really, one mutual reaction: _Panic_ , all-consuming, thought-scattering panic, and the moment unfolds so fast that I can't say _why_ I end up looking to my left – if Dylan was doing so and I followed suit, if I sensed the threat myself, if I just moved and it happened to be in that direction – but I _do_ end up looking to my left, and I see two men coming towards us, clad in identical khaki uniforms, badges on their chests and scowls on their faces.

It's worth noting that I recognize one of these men.

I've just dropped the cigarette when CJ yells, "Fuck – _Run!"_ and here's the thing: I'm smarter than CJ, smarter than all of these kids, _significantly_ so, and I should know better than they do. And yet – and _yet_ – as the men approach and Dylan yanks my elbow, my body reacts. I have no other explanation, nothing like an excuse. My body just _reacts_.

Which is how I end up being chased through a Bon Temps cemetery by Jason Stackhouse as Michael Jackson provides the background music. The song – "Smooth Criminal," for the record – reaches me and plucks strings in my brain even as I flee the scene, flee from the stone with the name of a monarch and the stolen box of beer and the googly-eyed speaker from which the song blares, flee from a couple of backwoods cops, flee from the threat of Eric's wrath as I've never seen it before, never felt it before, I just flee, flee, _flee_.

As if it could possibly be enough.

" _ **Annie, are you okay? So, Annie are you okay?**_

_**Are you okay, Annie?** _

_**Annie, are you okay? So, Annie are you okay?** _

_**Are you okay, Annie?"** _


	2. The New World

**Present Day**

It's quiet in Eric's office. I sit on the end of his couch closest to the door, my legs folded like I'm a meditating monk, because the cushions in this thing are so stuffed that my feet won't touch the ground if I let them hang off normally. I'd have to literally sit on the edge of my seat. I don't want to do that, it makes me look tense. So. Folded legs.

Dr. Mallory sits in one of the wooden chairs that are supposed to face Eric's desk. At the start of the session, he dragged the chair to the center of the room and turned it towards my place on the couch, just like he did the first two times he came here. Now he waits and stares at me. Dr. Mallory might be somewhere in his thirties, but I'm not good at guessing ages. He wears thick, square glasses, and he's Asian, at least partly, though his name doesn't suggest it and I can't begin to guess which part of Asia he or his family might be from. He has a clipboard in his lap and a pen in his hand, ready if I say something major.

We're three sessions in. He should know better by now.

Dr. Mallory is fond of the same tactic Dr. Bishop often used (Bishop was the first therapist – Mallory is the third one I've had since June), which is saying nothing when I say nothing in hopes that I'll get tired of saying nothing and speak. I think this has to do with silence sometimes making people uncomfortable. Unfortunately, for Bishop then and Mallory now, I'm far more comfortable being silent in therapy than I am with talking. This is largely due to the fact that I neither want nor need therapy and am, in fact, here against my will; also, however, having someone sit still in front of you for extended periods of time – saying nothing, doing nothing to distract you – provides a marvelous opportunity to practice some things. At least if you're psychic.

I eye the wrinkles in Mallory's forehead. Joanie – someone I spent time with in France, months ago – told me she usually starts with wrinkles when she's trying to read someone without touching them. Reading like that, you have to focus on the personal pieces of a person, the physical personal pieces that speak to the life the person lives. Wrinkles, tattoos, scars, jewelry, sometimes even clothing, if it looks well-lived in. All of these things, of course, come after the eyes. The eyes are tricky, though. Trying to get information from a person's eyes usually just gives you what they're feeling – or thinking, if you're telepathic, which I've yet to be – at that moment. The more experienced empaths, like Joanie, can move past that and find out more, but I'm still far from being able to do that.

Probably.

The wrinkles in Mallory's forehead bunch together and smooth out just as I'm discovering exactly how tired he is today – which is very – and my concentration breaks. That was Mallory popping his eyebrows. And now he sighs. Damn it. He's about to start talking.

"Okay . . ."

Knew it.

The doctor's voice is too bright as he flips through the (mostly blank) papers pinned to his clipboard. Poor papers. They're hostages, like me. "During our last session, you touched on something I thought was interesting." He stops on a page, scans it. "You said you were four when you found out Eric was a vampire. I'd like for us to spend some time talking about that today."

Are glasses something I can read from? Joanie never said, and I've never tried, but surely something a person wears every day for the sake of seeing things clearly is a pretty personal object. I study the frames resting on Mallory's oily nose, extending myself to them – mentally, I mean – in that certain way Joanie couldn't quite describe to me and I can't quite describe to anyone else. You just have to do it, have to feel for yourself that piece of your mind stretching forward, into the world, at your command.

It's a good feeling, I can say that much.

"Could you tell me about that, Annika?”

A feeling that requires  _concentration_  to maintain.

"Sorry?" I don't look away from Mallory's glasses, and maybe,  _maybe_ I feel my eyes itch a bit. You can talk while you read someone, it's just more difficult, and I haven't had a lot of practice doing it. Really, then, Mallory forcing conversation is good, but . . . annoying.

"Could you tell me about how you found out Eric was a vampire? Or at least something different from you?"

"Oh. Not really. I barely remember it."

"What do you remember?"

_A hotel suite . . . a pretty nanny who smiled a lot, a stranger who wouldn't look at me at all, and Eric, Eric pushing his way into the room, looking like a lion someone forgot to feed . . . and . . ._

. . . and all of my mind has completely snapped back into my head. Mallory's glasses are back to a mere, blank accessory. I pull my lower lip into my mouth and bite.

"Nothing," I say, perhaps stiffly. "I don't remember anything."

"A second ago you said you  _barely_ remembered it."

"Yes."

"That's different from not remembering anything."

My hands have that twitchy feeling that means they want to wring, but that looks as bad as being on the edge of my seat, so I just grip my kneecaps and scan Mallory for other things I could get a reading from. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"You don't seem to want to talk about most of the things that come up when we talk, Annika. Why do you think that is?"

"Probably because I don't want to be here." Mallory's wearing a long-sleeved button-down – or button-up, I'm not sure what the difference is – so if he has a tattoo, it's hidden. The same with any noticeable scar. But maybe his hands –

Mallory opens his arms, disrupting my search. "But you are here."

He explains this no further. Unless you count giving me a wise sort of look that tells me I really should be finding this statement profound. "I'm not sure what you mean by that," I say, I think politely, and the doctor's arms fall.

"Exactly what it sounds like I mean. You  _are_ here, whether or not you want to be –"

"And I don't," I mutter.

"– so why not at least  _try_ to reap the benefits of therapy? Especially when, with very few exceptions, whatever comes up in our sessions is confidential?"

Here's the most annoying part of what he just said: Mallory – like Bishop and the second therapist, who was a counselor but not a doctor and told me to call him  _Kevin_  – was chosen by Eric from a list, provided by Dr. Ludwig, of therapists in or around the Shreveport area who have experience with the supernatural. Aside from Eric deciding (reluctantly, I've always assumed) that I should be able to talk about my psychic abilities in therapy, he also wanted someone who was tolerant of and knowledgeable about vampires, because – even though he can, and I have no doubt  _has_ , glamoured these people into repeating nothing I say to outsiders – he thought a typical human therapist might be distracted or put off by certain elements of my life.

Imagine that.

My point is, Mallory should know damn well why I won't try to  _reap the benefits of therapy_ , because Mallory should know damn well that nothing between us is  _confidential,_ because Mallory should know damn _fucking_ wellthat most vampires hate not having control and are very unlikely to feel bad about glamouring someone for information that  _gives_ them control, no matter what confidentiality rules the someone being glamoured has said he'll follow, even  _wants_  to follow. Most vampires just don't care.

Eric, I'm quite certain, cares even less than most.

No matter what he's told me to the contrary.

Something catches the light, and my eye, when Mallory interlaces his fingers. Ah. His wedding ring. I should have considered that sooner, but I tend not to think about wedding rings – they're very human. I narrow my eyes at the thing, gold and simple and pretty. Mallory told me during our first session that he and his wife have been married twelve years, which is a lot of time for that ring to pick things up.

"Annika, are you listening to me?"

"Of course, Doctor."

"I would like for you to talk about what happened when you were four. Finding out what Eric was. If only as an exercise."

That special piece of my mind finds the ring, touches on it with a sensation – can I use that word, though? – touches on it in a way that reminds me of nail polish flooding over a nail when you had too much of it on the brush. Oh, yes. This ring has picked up a lot. "May I ask, Dr. Mallory, what you hope to learn from that story?" I say to say something.

"As I said, it may only serve as an exercise, something to make you more comfortable with me. We could, however, discover that this event had more of an impact on you than you realize. Few studies have been conducted on vampires and children, but from what we do know . . ."

He goes on like that for a minute. I nod a couple of times, but my attention is on the ring, the ring, this, oh,  _magnificent_ jackpot of a ring that I should have read before anything else, that I should have read the moment I met Mallory.

I'll be getting out of this session early, I think.

"So," the doctor says in a concluding way, "Did Eric tell you he was different from most people, or did you find out some other way?"

"Excuse me, Doctor, but – what was that you said about my being comfortable with you?"

"Um – only that I want you to be. You should feel safe enough to view me as a confidante."

"May I ask you questions about yourself, then?" I say this to the ring. It's still sending me things, like flashes from a lighthouse. "To get to know you better?"

A brief pause, then, "Certainly. Within reason."

"Thank you. Does your wife know you like men?"

Mallory's fingers go rigid.

" _Lots_ of men." I don't  _see_  these men, thankfully, but I sense them, the sort-of ghosts of their presence. And I feel the guilt and darkness of the nights Mallory's spent with them. Some of those nights are fresh, they happened recently, and . . .

"Oh. She doesn't know, does she?" I break from the ring, come back to myself like a shirt being folded, and tilt my head at Dr. Mallory. He's gone pale. His oily nose is even oilier, his whole face looks oily now, and his eyes – the windows to the soul, remember – shoot me with an iron bolt of anger, dread, and oh, shame. So much shame.

I'm used to feeling sudden rushes of other people's emotions, though, so I don't even flinch. And I push back on his feelings, nudge them to the very edges of my mind like Joanie taught me. I smile my sweetest smile. "Don't worry, Doctor. Whatever comes up in our sessions is confidential."

. . . . .

As I predicted, Dr. Mallory ends the session early.

I decide to make coffee. I could use the energy. Reading the ring drained me a bit, I may have pushed myself more than I should have. Also, though, I can always go for coffee.

My coffee station is in the storage room. It consists of a French press, an electric grinder, an electric kettle (that's also for tea, technically), and four bags of beans (though the number of bags varies), all on a stainless-steel table that just manages to squeeze into the space between the refrigerator and the shelves. The appliances were one of Eric's  _I'm sorry I'm making you come back to Louisiana_ gifts. The others were a turntable and season tickets to Shreveport's (surprisingly impressive) repertory theatre. Oh, and a budget to redecorate my room, which I used to more-or-less whitewash the place, as I'd grown rather accustomed to spacious (and windowed) rooms during the time Eric and I spent in Europe and multiple interior design websites promised me that white walls and furniture would create the illusion of space. And they did, to an extent. But redecorating could only do so much. All the gifts could only do so much. Not just because I missed Europe, barely because of that. There were . . . other things.

I pour bottled water into the kettle and scoop some beans – a Lavazza dark roast – into the grinder, where they turn to dust, a process I find satisfying to witness. Once the grounds and the hot water are doing their work in the French press and I'm leaning against the wall, watching the liquid darken, it occurs to me that it's probably after ten by now. Close, anyway. Eric doesn't want me drinking coffee after ten.

But Eric isn't here.

Eric has gone to see Sookie Stackhouse.

Who isn't dead.

I swallow. The grounds swirl through the water.

When the coffee is made, I carry a warm, steaming mug into the hall. But, because  _Eric isn't here_ , I don't go straight to my room. For once, something I'm mildly interested in,  _and_  actually allowed to witness, is happening at the club. So, instead of passing by the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, I push through it, entering the bar. Immediately, I catch a scowl from the nearest person – there are maybe ten strangers here – a woman with a headset and a long pole that has a microphone on the end. I gaze back at her, sipping my coffee, and after a second she shifts her feet and looks away.

The people are clumped together in front of Pam – well, I guess Pam is in front of them, really. She's on a barstool, clad in a pink, lovely-but-professional (normal-human-job professional) dress, hair styled into wide curls. She looks beautiful. And like she'd rather have a stake in her chest than be doing what she's doing.

"Yes, of  _course_ Fangtasia is for everyone," she's says into a camera, a big, meant-for-real-television camera. There's a man standing beside it, and I think he must be at least somewhat in charge, because he's the only one here in a suit and tie. His expression is grim.

To the left of that man, though, is the reason I say he's  _at least somewhat_ in charge. To the left of that man, sitting in what seems to be an actual director's chair, wearing a headset of her own, is Nan Flanagan. She watches Pam with a look as sharp as all her other features. This, keep in mind, is the same Nan Flanagan who one year ago sat in this very room with different, smaller cameras, interrogating Eric for the Authority's benefit. The same Nan Flanagan who was more than ready to execute my guardian for a murder he didn't commit.

But now? Now, she is an ally. Because that's just how things work in the world of vampires. Or in the world of politics. I'm not sure, maybe both.

Pam's listing things now. I climb onto a stool at the end of the bar.

"Vampires. Humans. Men. Women. Families. Pets." Each word rolls from her tongue like a heavy log. Families? As in, children?  _I'm_  not even allowed on the floor during club hours. I never have been, not even when things were good for me here – well,  _better_  for me here.  _Slightly_   _less shitty_ for me here. Oh, and there's certainly a  _No Pets_ policy. At least for rabbits.

But none of this is about being real, I know that, I'm not stupid. This, this is about publicity,  _good_ publicity. Vampires need as much of that as they can get these days. Thanks to a certain madman king from Mississippi.

Who isn't dead.

"Everyone is welcome," Pam drones – yes, that's the perfect word for it,  _drones_. "Come on down. The blood is warm, and so is the service."

Her voice is so very cold when she says this that, for the first time tonight, I smile in a good way, a truly good way. Slightly. Into my coffee.

The suit-and-tied man puts one hand on his hip, rests the other on the camera, almost as if he's trying to comfort it. Then, in an overly-patient tone much like the one my new math tutor uses to guide me through an equation, he says, "And . . . do human families have anything to  _fear_  with vampire-owned businesses in their community?"

"No."

The room waits for Pam to elaborate. She doesn't.

Nan Flanagan slouches forward, jerkily, as if someone short tugged a string tied to her chin. She raises her shoulders in a  _What, that's it?_ motion, palms flipped towards the ceiling, and seeing Nan Flanagan like that – unhappy, I mean, even just a little – makes me smile-in-a-good-way a bit more.

But then I hear the EMPLOYEES ONLY door open behind me. And my smile vanishes. Just that quickly, like it's fallen through a trapdoor.

I didn't expect him back so soon. I didn't expect him back until nearly dawn, actually, and maybe not even then – he's had an underground bedroom installed at Sookie's, just like the one he has on Öland, so why wouldn't he spend the day in Bon Temps? After dedicating so much time in the past year to finding Sookie, to preparing for the return he always believed she'd make?

_Maybe Sookie didn't want to see him._

_Would he care?_

I wrap my hands around my mug, lifting my chin as the suit-and-tied man tries to get Pam to say more. I keep my head turned towards them, turned from the door, even as I hear footsteps nearing from that side of me. Even as I feel or hear or somehow otherwise  _sense_  someone leaning over the bar beside me.

"How's she doing?" Eric murmurs as Pam reiterates that, no, humans have nothing to fear from vampire-owned businesses. I think she does this using the exact words the suit-and-tied man just used, but I'm not certain. I'm distracted now.

"Badly," I reply. Civilly. "She thinks it's stupid."

"Mm. And charm isn't exactly her strong suit, is it?"

I don't react. I certainly don't look at him. I  _hate_  it when he does that, tries to make a joke like that, when he knows, he  _knows_ we don't do that anymore. "Did you see Sookie?" I mutter, because that's all we need to talk about.

"Briefly, yes."

"Why briefly?" And I can't help it. "Where was she? Is she okay?"

Oh, I don't mean for those questions to come out like they do – meaning hungry, hungry for information from  _Eric_. But they burst out. Because I  _am_  hungry for information. And Eric happens to be the one who has it.

"She seemed well." He's still whispering, but he sounds happy, in a low-key Eric way. "I didn't get a chance to question her, however. We were . . . interrupted. But I'll go to her again tomorrow, once she has had time to –"

"Stop!" Nan Flanagan orders, interrupting Eric, as well as Pam. "Cut," she orders the suit-and-tied man, or maybe the camera people, before aiming a single, sticklike finger my way. But, obviously, it isn't really my way.  _"That_ is the man we want."

"What?" Eric says in a too-pleasant voice, a nearly  _sweet_ voice that hides a joke for just him and Pam. And, fine, for me. "Pam not so good?"

Flanagan yanks her headset to her neck. "She was fine. If you happen to be blind and deaf and an  _idiot_."

"What's idiotic," Pam says, a touch too calmly, "is that the AVL believes the public to be so naïve."

As she speaks, Eric pushes off the bar, which lets me relax a little. My hands loosen from my mug, anyway. They were sort of strangling it.

Flanagan says to Pam, "I have proof. Scientific. People are far dumber than they realize . . ." And, to the room: "It's a post-Russell Edgington world, everyone! And we win back the public one smile at a time."

Flanagan replaces her headset, and Eric walks to Pam. No,  _strolls_ , he  _strolls_  to Pam, because strollingis what you do when you're in total control of the room and the situation and you know it. And Eric  _always_  knows that, because it's always that way for him. Virtually.

I slide from my seat, taking my mug with me.

Eric flips some of Pam's hair over her shoulder so he can pluck a tiny black thing from her dress. A microphone, I think. He snaps it onto his jacket and waves away his progeny, who goes without protest. Almost eagerly, actually.

I go, too. Less eagerly, maybe, but without hesitation.

"Action," I hear Eric say as I near the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. His voice grows then, spreads out through the room, takes it over in a warm way, an inviting way, a way that means he's playing the businessman. Charming the world. As he is so very good at.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Eric Northman. I'm a taxpaying American and small-business owner in the great state of Louisiana. I also happen to be a vampire."

_And one time, around thirteen years ago, I purchased an unborn baby girl so I could use her psychic abilities for my own purposes, and now I keep her in a windowless room in the back of my vampire bar._

I kick open the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, causing a much-too-loud  _thunk_. I feel eyes on my back. But Eric, Eric continues, Eric doesn't miss a beat, dismissing  _inflammatory talk_   _about vampires_  as casually as he would dismiss anything he doesn't really care about all that much.


	3. Break

Maybe an hour later, as my turntable spins Queen's  _Sheer Heart Attack_  from my dresser and my laptop plays a yoga DVD from my draped-in-white bed, I move from Downward-Facing Dog to Crescent Lunge and discover Eric standing in front of me.

I lose my balance – it's knocked out of me, really. I have to bring my left hand down to the ground, fast, to keep from falling, and I grit my teeth.

"I knocked," Eric calls over Freddie Mercury and the (barely-heard to begin with) yoga instructor.

I reset myself and stretch my hands up, settling into the lunge, eyes on the ceiling. "Sorry."

Eric walks past me. To my dresser, I'm guessing. The turntable . . . and sure enough, the room is suddenly all too quiet.

"Odd choice of music for yoga, isn't it?" Eric says as the yoga instructor – Shelly-something, I think – cheerfully tells me to move into Warrior One. "I'd think you'd want something more calming."

"Queen does calm me." I can't help but think about the awful poetic nature of Eric stopping a record Jack told me to get, though I don't like to think about Jack at all when Eric's around. I'm not sure if Jack would like or hate that I feel that way. But, of course, I don't know Jack all that well, do I?

_You probably know him as well as you know Eric._

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

Eric returns to the head of my mat as Shelly says to reach up and lift from my heart –  _as if to give the sky a gentle boost_  – and I see that he took off his shoes, at least, like I got back into the habit of doing during our time on Öland, like I became especially careful about when I got the white shag carpet now covering most of my dull concrete floor. So that's something from Eric, something considerate . . . a  _little_  something. One of the little somethings he does for me sometimes because they require almost no effort on his part and he thinks I'll be better for him if I'm happy.

"Ms. Flanagan and the camera crew have left," he says.

I already knew that. The crew was made up of humans, so I felt them go, and I had no reason to think Flanagan would hang around. Eric  _knows_  that I already knew that, though, or he should, at least. "Alright." I shift into Warrior Two, one arm reaching behind me and one reaching for Eric's stomach.

"Would you take a break for a moment, please?"

I bend deeper into my lunge. "Dr. Ludwig said she wanted me to exercise more." Back to Downward-Facing Dog now. I fold over and push my hips high, let my head dangle. I like this feeling, being upside down, my head filling and filling with blood.

I hear a faint  _click_. Shelly's voice vanishes halfway through directing me to Plank.

My fingers press too hard into the mat, and I move to Plank anyway. I lower myself and curl into Upward-Facing Dog . . . I've done this DVD twenty times, I know the routine, I don't even know why I bother playing it anymore. Habit, I suppose.

Arced back like this, I'm pretty much forced to look at Eric. His lips, I think, are closed a little too tight. I pop my eyebrows. "Do you want me to get fat?"

"Dr. Ludwig did not recommend more exercise because she feared you would get fat. If anything, you're too small. I still fight the urge to grab you anytime there's a particularly strong breeze."

It's been months since Eric and I were together anywhere there might have been a breeze of any kind. That would have been the last time he took me to a diner, I think. I only ordered coffee, and something about that irritated him, and we argued. At the table, in the car on the way back to the club. I think he accused me of being sullen, so, yeah, I argued, because that was when I still did that. Before I realized that arguing never seemed to do much good and that being silent, apart from taking less energy, actually bothered Eric  _more_.

He offers me his hand. I flip back to Downward-Facing Dog, quickly, so maybe it looks like I didn't notice him move. I bring my left foot between my hands, my right foot between my hands, and roll slowly to a stand, and once I'm there, I crack my neck and cross my arms and gaze up at my dear guardian. "Is there something you forgot to tell me about Sookie?" I ask in the politest of voices.

"No," Eric says in the most patient of voices, "I told you everything. As I said, we only met for a moment."

Were this conversation between our old selves, I probably would have asked Eric about his plans concerning Sookie. Maybe make sure he was sure she looked okay, sure she didn't say  _anything_ about where she's been for a year, where she's been where  _I couldn't feel her,_ where Bill and Eric couldn't feel her. I might have asked if Eric would take me with him when he goes back to Bon Temps tomorrow, so I can see Sookie, who I liked. Who I mourned.

But we're not our old selves. So I don't ask anything.

I can't bring myself to.

Eric slides his hands into his pockets, head hanging a little. "I just received a voicemail from Dr. Mallory. He says he doesn't feel he's a good fit for you and recommends I find someone else. Do you have any idea why he might feel like this?"

A sense of triumph – stained with spots of guilt, but just  _tiny_  spots – flows through me, but I'm careful to keep my face blank. "I guess he didn't think we were connecting."

"You don't seem surprised."

"He didn't seem to like me very much."

"And you always being so pleasant."

I say nothing.

Eric looks away, just for a moment, then we're staring at each other again.  _Glaring_ , is the more fitting word. "It doesn't matter if he likes you or not. He's a doctor. He's paid to help people, regardless of what he thinks of them personally."

_Well, actually,_ you  _pay him to find out what I'm thinking. Because you can't do it yourself._

I shrug. "Maybe he realized I don't need any help."

"I find that unlikely."

"Because I'm destined for insanity?"

Eric's face doesn't so much as twitch, but his voice lowers, just slightly. "We're not going through that again."

That's fine. I don't really want to. I only said that because I know Eric's annoyed by the topic . . . or, something.

I don't know why I said it.

I uncross my arms, even though doing so goes against my instincts. I clasp my hands behind my back and tilt my head, bat my eyelashes the way I might have as an adoring little girl, a stupid little girl who didn't know enough of anything. And Eric, Eric clenches his jaw. Because we both know I'm not that little girl anymore.

"Annika," he says, "The first two therapists I dismissed at your request, because you'd met with each for several weeks with no discernible progress, and it is normal, in therapy, to try different people. But this one you barely gave a chance. And even if you didn't like him, I think you can agree that running him off – as opposed to coming to me with your concerns – was not an especially mature way to handle the situation."

Had I come to him with my  _concerns,_  he would have told me to give it a few more weeks. Just like he did with Dr. Bishop and  _Kevin_. But there's no point in telling Eric this, so I just blink some more.

Eric takes a deep breath, as he's taken to doing more and more during our conversations. "I'm calling someone new tomorrow. It's very unlikely you'll persuade me to let him or her go anytime soon, so I suggest you start making an effort to get something out of these sessions. Or, I suppose, you could figure out how to drive this one away, too, and all the ones that come after. But you should know that if we reach that point I will simply return to the top of the list and start glamouring you out of these peoples' memories so they will meet with you again, because, Annika, as I've told you, you are going to stay in therapy until I'm convinced you've at least  _attempted_ to gain from it."

_But you don't care if I gain from it!_ I want so badly to shout.  _It's only about what_ you  _gain from it! What you can find out about me that lets you control me_ that much more!

Behind my back, I'm gripping one wrist so tightly that the fingers on that hand have begun to tingle. But my face gives nothing away. Or, I try to make it give nothing away.

Eric turns and walks to the door. Strolls, actually. Of course he strolls. As he slips his shoes on again, he says, quite easily, "Also, if you keep drinking coffee after ten, I'll forbid you from using your French press anywhere but in my office." He steps into the hallway. "Enjoy your yoga."

He closes the door, very softly. My room has never been so silent.


	4. That Bad

**July**

Jason Stackhouse looks like he would rather be anywhere else. Odd, maybe, since we're in his childhood home, him swinging his arms in the kitchen's archway, me at the same old wooden table I sat at the first night I saw a werewolf. Well, saw a werewolf and knew it was a werewolf, anyway. That was before Sookie went missing. Before Russell Edgington set the vampire mainstreaming movement back to maybe its beginning. Before I learned things Eric never wanted me to know.

"Be dark soon." Jason keeps slapping his fist into his hand. He tosses his arms back, brings them forward, and slaps his fist into his hand. It's a strange motion.

I blink back at him, not saying thank you, not saying I know, not pointing out that I can see a total of three windows from where I'm currently sitting and therefore am quite aware of the impending sunset. No, none of that. Better to just blink. Less dangerous. Takes less energy, too.

Jason, at my silence, licks his lips and raises up on his calves, drops down again. Swings his arms back, swings them forward. Slaps his fist into his hand. He hasn't stopped moving since he brought me here from the cemetery, after the other cop loaded Dylan, CJ, Layla, and Cassie – who was crying like a child – into his car to deliver them to their parents. That other cop first gave us all a lecture, of course, to ensure we understood we could be arrested for underage drinking, and would be, if it happened again. The whole thing was almost laughable. Him thinking that would scare me, I mean. Given what I was going to have to face on my own. What I  _am_ going to have to face on my own.

Jason glances out the closest window, the one over the sink, like maybe he hopes Eric has decided not to worry about sunlight this evening and will arrive earlier than expected. Although we don't know exactly what time he'll show up. Jason had to leave a voicemail, since he called while it was still light out. I gave him the club's number, because Eric's careful about who can call his personal phone.

And because Pam might hear the message before Eric does, in which case she'll tell him what's happened, and maybe she'll do so in a way that won't infuriate him quite so much as if he heard it via Jason on the answering machine.

_It'll still infuriate him enough._

He's going to kill me.

The beer buzz has long worn off. I miss it. And I want a cigarette.

"Hey – you want somethin' to drink?" Jason asks, lighting up. You'd think his suggestion was a novel idea, one with the potential to save mankind. But there – the light's dimming. "Oh. Guess you should be askin' me that, huh?"

I tilt my head.

"I mean, uh, you shouldn't be askin' me anything. Or, you don't have to. I just meant, you know, 'cause it's polite, to ask people if . . . Not that – not that you're bein' impolite –"

"Would you like something to drink, Officer Stackhouse?" I ask, as if I've spent a single night in this house, which Jason's family owned for generations. As if he and I aren't surrounded by furniture and appliances and  _stuff_  purchased or otherwise obtained by his sister or grandmother or maybe relatives even older.

Jason lets out a long sigh. A lock of blonde hair falls over his forehead. "No. Thank you." He studies me for a second before looking out the window again, arms swinging. I can feel his emotions, but truly, I think anyone could see Jason right now and know how he's feeling. I think he's an open book for anyone, not just someone like me.

And maybe I'm still buzzing from the beer after all. Or maybe most things don't seem to matter in this moment. Maybe something else. Whatever the reason, I say, "You can relax. Really. Eric isn't going to be angry with you. Just me."

Jason starts to speak, but he takes his time, like he can't get the word to form quite right. "Well," he finally says, and that's it.

I study him, the brother of the missing part-fairy telepath – and he's part-fairy himself, I suppose – fidgeting in his sister's kitchen (and it  _is_ her kitchen, I don't care what papers Eric has signed). I knew he'd become a cop, because I stay at Jessica and Hoyt's sometimes and Hoyt is Jason's best friend, but this is the first time I'm seeing Jason in uniform. It suits him better than I would have guessed, from our brief interactions and the things I've heard about him. "Would you like to sit down?" I nod to the chair across the table.

"Oh. No, thanks, I'm good."

"Please sit down, Officer," I say. Possibly just to see if I can get him to. Manipulating people can be a good pastime, as well as a useful skill. These are the sorts of things I've learned in my childhood. "You're moving so much, it's making me nervous."

So Jason, after a second's hesitation, pulls out the chair across from me and lowers slowly into it, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. I look at him. He looks down at the table, up at me, at the table, at me.

"Seriously," I say. "You have nothing to worry about. Even if Eric  _did_ blame you, he'd never hurt Sookie's brother."

Jason's eyes fall to the table again, and I feel his anxiety make way for something heavier, something that almost makes me cringe. Grief.

"I'm sorry," I say without thinking. "I didn't mean to . . . I shouldn't have brought her up."

"Nah, it's okay." Jason picks at a scrape on the table. "I was already kinda thinkin' about her. It's hard to be here without . . ." His voice fades, and he sighs again.

For the first time, I think about how Jason must have felt, selling Sookie's house. And there's really not much to think about that, is there? How many ways can you feel about selling the home of your loved and missing sister, the home which happens to have been in your family for decades, maybe more than a century?

"You know what Eric's got planned for this place?" Jason asks. He's suddenly not so twitchy, which is a relief, I guess, even if that's just because his sadness has weighed down his nerves. "I never actually met with him, when I sold it. Just talked to some people on the phone."

I brush my fingers across the beaten table's surface, over scratches and dents and other marks that are really memories. "Eric doesn't tell me things."

"Oh," Jason says. "And you can't . . . You know . . ." He points his right index and middle fingers at his temple and moves the hand forward an inch, backwards an inch, three times.

I'd forgotten he knows about my abilities. Which is a stupid, dangerous thing for me to do. Though not as stupid and dangerous as letting him know about it in the first place – which, actually, if I remember correctly, was Sookie's doing. So I can't really be all that mad about it, can I? "I don't read Eric."

"'Cause he's a vampire?"

"Because he's Eric."

"What's that mean?"

"He values his privacy."  _Also, he's ridiculously old and powerful and therefore impossible to read ninety percent of the time._ No need to mention that.

"Yeah, well . . ." Jason shrugs, half-grins. "Most people do, right?"

"Most people won't tear out your heart over it."

The half-grin slides from Jason's face. We sit quietly. Through the windows I see that the world is almost all black. I close my eyes. If Eric drives here, I have around an hour. If he flies here, I have minutes.

"What's he, uh . . ."

I open my eyes to see Jason's folded his hands on the table. He's twiddling his thumbs, literally. I don't think I've ever seen someone actually do that. "What's he gonna do to you?" he asks. I think he tries to make it sound casual, but his eyebrows twitch down in a way that sort of ruins that for him.

Also, I can sense his concern.

It gets tiring, sensing things.

"I don't know," I say. Truthfully.

"I mean, he can't get that mad at you, right? Just for drinkin' with some other kids? Hell, every kid does that, sooner or later. Uh –  _Heck_. Sorry."

"I'm not every kid." I'm the kid in the illegal custody of Eric Northman. The kid he paid a lot for, the kid he expects certain things from. Certain behavior. "And it's not just about drinking with some other kids. It's about . . ."  _Going somewhere without his permission. Going somewhere without his permission_ in the daytime.  _Doing so on multiple occasions. Lying about it in each case. Getting caught by humans, human_ cops.  _Stealing liquor from his bar._ "Yes, he can get that mad at me."

More sitting quietly, and then: "You know, if . . . if he's hurtin' you, there're things we can do about it. I mean, I'm the Law. I can talk to Sheriff Bellefleur –"

"No, you – Listen to me, Jason." I lean over the table, vaguely aware that I didn't use his title and caring even less than I might have normally, because my being formal with Jason is part of a game, and this is not. He just made it not. "Do not talk to anyone about this. About me and Eric. You can't fuck with him like that, he won't stand for it."

"Hey, now, no need for that kinda language –"

"Jason, he will hurt you. He will  _fucking_ hurt you."

Jason has straightened, hands in his lap now. He pulled them back when I was talking, the way you'd stop petting a dog if it growled. "I thought you said he wouldn't hurt me. 'Cause of Sookie."

I swallow. Rest again against the back of my chair. "If you make enough trouble for him, he will." I let my hands come together to wring. "Believe me, he will."

I shouldn't say that. It sounds suspicious. But I say it anyway, because . . . just because.

"Eric doesn't hurt me," I say, not lying, really, because Eric  _doesn't_ hurt me. Not the way Jason means. "I don't know how he'll punish me for this, but he'll be . . . humane about it."

_Yes. Because if there is one thing Eric Northman is known for, it's being humane._

"Humane?" Jason repeats. "That's the sorta word you use when you're talkin' 'bout animals. Not . . . kids."

I'm opening my mouth to correct him when a crack opens up inside of me, and all the things around it shake. My hands turn to fists, but only one stays on the table, because I instinctively pop the other one up to block my face from Jason. Sometimes I can feel something from someone without physically reacting at all. But sometimes, with big things, my body can't help but respond. My face can't help but smile or frown or, as is the case now, flinch.

"Annie? Hey – what's wrong?"

I smooth my expression, though it takes some effort. I lower my hand, toss back my hair. "Nothing. I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

But I barely hear what he says back, because my insides are still shaking. All of me is still shaking.

Eric knows.

. . . . .

"Hey," Jessica's voice crackles into my ear. I step along the edge of the old floral rug that covers most of Sookie's living room floor, pretending I'm walking a balance beam. Not really, of course. It's been a long time since I've pretended anything for real. The voicemail continues, "Um . . . I get you not wantin' to talk to me, but Annie, I . . . I feel really bad about what I said to you before."

She means when she called me an hour or so ago, right after sundown. Jason had called Hoyt to explain the situation, because he knows I stay at his house when I'm in Bon Temps. And Hoyt told Jessica everything when she woke up. So I gathered, anyway. Jessica was a bit too busy to give me details concerning how she found out what had happened. Busy, that is, with yelling at me, mainly finding new ways to ask if I'd considered what Eric might do to her and Hoyt if something happened to me under their watch. Throughout the whole (mainly one-sided) conversation, Jason pretended not to eavesdrop. I glance through the foyer now, into the kitchen, where he's sitting at the table, rearranging his pieces on a  _Sorry!_ gameboard. Pretending not to eavesdrop.

"I was just . . . freaked out by the whole thing," Jessica says. There's some background noise, someone shouting, some laughter. She must be working tonight, at Merlotte's. I can't remember if she told me she was, though. "And I'm sorry, I know I must've sounded like I was just all worried about myself, and I'm – I'm not, I know you . . . I know you're probably gonna have a lot to deal with from this. I'm sure Eric's . . . Just, I'm thinkin' about you, is all. So, call me? When you can? I'm not mad anymore, I swear. That was stupid, just . . . Let me know you're okay . . . Bye."

_Click,_ and then nothing but silence from my phone.

It  _was_  stupid of her to be mad, to be worried about herself – not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. It's just that she clearly hasn't grasped how different her life is now that her maker is king. Eric won't touch her. He probably wouldn't have anyway, considering I sneaked out of her and Hoyt's place during the day – when she was sleeping and he was at work – and therefore there wasn't much of anything Jessica, or any vampire, could have done to stop me. Especially since – as far as I know – she never suspected I might do something like that. Any of the four times I did.

Honestly . . . I never would have behaved like this if I thought Eric might take it out on Jessica, or Hoyt, for that matter. I like them both. I've been spending a couple of nights with them a couple of times a month for a few months now, and I like that, too. It's a nice break from Shreveport.

Well, it was. I very much doubt it will be happening anymore.

Jessica really is worried about me. I could hear it in her voice, just now. She's still a young vampire. She still cares a lot.

That'll pass.

I return to the kitchen and slip my phone into the pocket of my coat, draped over the back of a chair. Jason's eyes follow my hand there and back, then meet mine. "That Jessica again?"

He knows it was, but I nod anyway.

"What she say?"

"Nothing. Well-wishes."

"Ah, I knew she'd feel bad once she calmed down a little. Jess’s one of the good ones." He looks down at the board, but even without eye contact, I feel a burst of warm affection rush from him and through me. Affection for Jessica. Jason is extremely,  _extremely_  easy to read, and I've picked up something like that, that burst, almost every time I've been around him at Jessica and Hoyt's. Jason Stackhouse has feelings for his best friend's live-in girlfriend. Who's going to be around, beautiful and vibrant, centuries after both men are dust. It's all very dramatic.

And sad, somehow. Which may be why I've never said anything to Jessica about Jason's feelings.

Jason nods at the board. "Play again?"

"No, thank you. It's a bit too simplistic for my taste."

"Aw, you're just sayin' that 'cause you lost."

"It's  _meaningless_  that I lost, there's no skill involved, and –"

Something flashes in the corner of my eye. There's light playing across the window over the sink. And now that Jason and I are both quiet, I can hear the faint, rainlike sound of gravel crunching beneath tires. I reach out and take hold of my coat, clenching the fabric in my fist. It's about an hour's drive between here and Shreveport. When Eric didn't show up right after sunset, I knew he must have opted not to fly. I very much doubt he did so because he knows his car is more comfortable for me. No, he only would have driven because he wanted time to think.

And, maybe, to cool down.

But when I step onto the porch, pulling my coat on, I realize things are worse than that. Because it's not Eric waiting for me out here, but Pam, slamming the door of her sleek little car and striding to the porch in heels far too high for a place like Bon Temps, and certainly for a gravel driveway, though she doesn't seem to even notice the terrain.

"Shit," I breathe as Jason closes the door behind us. I think I feel him look at me, but I keep my eyes on Pam as she reaches the wooden steps. She stops, her face lit up in the dim yellow porch lights and giving me nothing. But . . . it's bad that Eric sent Pam instead of coming himself. I don't know exactly why that is, but I'm certain of it.

Pam locks eyes with me, jerks her head. I push my hands into my coat pockets and take the steps down to her.

"Hi," Jason says behind me. "I'm, uh, Officer Stackhouse. I thought Eric –"

"Sends his regrets. He's a very busy man." Pam studies Jason like an art critic disappointed by a piece. "I'm sure you can understand what that's like. Or . . . imagine it, anyway."

Jason squints down at her. "Hey, have we met?"

I'm pretty sure Jason's been to the club before, so the answer's probably yes. He would have seen Pam in a work outfit, though, something black and trailing and very different from the pastel blouse she's wearing now. But Pam purses her lips. "We have, but I'm not in the reminiscing mood. I need to know if this little incident is going to be documented in any way."

"Uh, documented?"

"Yes,  _documented._ Virtually, on paper, with clay tablets, however you're still doing things here,  _Officer._ "

"Oh, uh, no ma'am." I think Jason's finally registered that Pam's a vampire. His nerves are buzzing at me. "Like I said in the message I left – I mean, I guess maybe you didn't hear it – but, uh, no, they just – She just got a warnin'. And a call to her – to Eric. Uh, Mr. Northman. That's all."

"Lovely. Thanks so much." Pam's hand snaps onto my shoulder and she turns me, not gently, towards the car. She lets go as we start walking, thankfully, otherwise I'm sure I'd have a bruise.

I glance back at the house as I'm opening the passenger door. Jason's still standing at the top of the steps. Pounding his fist into his palm. It's a bit hard to tell with the porch lights behind him, but I think he's frowning, I think his brow is furrowed, and I think – I think I like Jason Stackhouse.

I slide into the car and buckle my seatbelt. Pam twists the key and guides us down Sookie's long driveway. Eric's long driveway. Whatever.

We don't go fast. When we reach the real road, the asphalt road, Pam pulls onto it without sending gravel flying behind her, which Eric always does. I check the dial by her steering wheel, the one that tells the car's speed. The red hand hovers around forty-five, and I think that's the speed limit, and Pam, she very rarely drives the speed limit. I don't think many vampires do.

"You're a fucking idiot," she says after a minute.

"Thanks, Pam."

"Oh, you  _should_ be thanking me, Princess." Her head turns my way, but I'm staring ahead, arms crossed, so I don't see exactly what sort of look I'm getting. I can imagine it well enough. "If I hadn't come to pick you up,  _Eric_ would have, and you don't wanna fucking know what he might've done if he'd seen you in the goddamn state he was in.  _I_  don't even wanna fucking know."

A strange feeling sprouts in the back of my neck and starts creeping out to the rest of my body. A numbness, entirely mine, like nothing I've ever felt before. But no, it's not a  _numbness_ , exactly, it's not totally blank, it's . . . There's a trembling to it. Like something hit me. And I'm in shock from it. "It's that bad?" My voice sounds strangely close, but also not all that much like my voice.

Pam exhales. She must send all of the air out of her little-used lungs in the process. And she shakes her head too, I think. "Goddamn it, Annika."

There's a trembling to her, too.


	5. Hidden Things

**A.N.: Sorry for the wait, guys. This chapter is short, but there's more coming soon. Enjoy.**

**. . . . .**

**Present Day**

There are two boxes hidden in the back of my closet. Not really _hidden,_ though, just – unassuming. Both are cardboard boxes from shipments to the bar, or maybe just to Eric or Pam, since they're rather small boxes – one is big enough to hold a cat, the other is big enough to hold a rabbit. A bigger rabbit, like Beowulf was. Like I think he was, anyway. I was much smaller than I am now, the last time I saw him.

Just after dawn – I make sure it's after dawn, I check the Internet for the sunrise time – I go down the hall and boil some water and grind some beans and start brewing coffee, though I carry the French press back to my room before it's ready, bringing a mug along. I set both things on my bedside table and cross the room, to my closet. I slide open the door, slide myself inside the tiny room.

It's a decent-sized closet, with a bar longer than I am tall stretching over my head, keeping all of my clothes just within my reach. The way the door works, though, is that it looks like a double-door but only one side opens – slides over, I mean – so to get to the far left side of my closet I have to side-step along the foot-or-so of space between the non-moving door (and the sliding door that's slid over it) and my hanging clothes. I'm little, though, so it's not much of a chore, as long as my closet is neat, with my shoes all pushed against the wall.

The rabbit-sized box sits on top of the cat-sized box. I pick it up, the rabbit-sized box, and even though it's not the box I'm after, I open it anyway, because . . . just because, I guess. With the light shining in from my bedroom, I look over the contents, the meaningless, unconnected little things all collected together in a place they don't belong. Keychains, lighters, cheap makeup products I'd never use, cheap jewelry I'd never wear, a few pieces of silverware, hair ties, pens, pencils . . . a lovely, random medley of nothing.

But I keep this medley, keep it and build it, so I can come back here and look at it. I suppose it feels good, in some way. I don't know. I've never thought about the _why_ of it. And I won't right now.

I close that box, put it aside, and pick up and open the bigger one. The things it keeps for me come and go, unlike with the other box, where things just come. Tonight, the cat-sized box holds six single-serve bags of Lays potato chips – an even blend of classic, barbeque, and sour cream flavors – and two Kit-Kats, two Reese's, and a Snickers. I loaded up the last time I went to the library. There's a vending machine there, in the big hallway that leads to the bathrooms, out-of-sight of most people – though most people wouldn't care, I suppose, and Ginger was already in the café. She always waits there, reading magazines while I browse. Asking the barista for help with the big words, maybe . . . Anyway. I fed dollar after dollar into the vending machine and packed the junk food into my oversized – and otherwise empty – purse.

Vending machines and giant purses. Those are your best friends when you live with a controlling vampire who disapproves of junk food.

I carry the box into my bedroom, sit on the floor with my back against the bed, and eat it all. I think I start out alternating the salty with the sweet, but I don't really pay attention to what I'm doing after the first minute. I'm just moving. Eating. Eating stuff I'm not supposed to eat, eating stuff Eric hates for me to eat, because Eric is dead in the basement and he can't stop me, he can't stop me, so I eat, I eat it all.

After, I shove the box away and look at all of the colorful, shiny material around me. The Snickers wrapper, when I threw it aside, managed to fall in just the right position for me to see its nutrition label, the calorie count, the amount of sugar, and I roll my eyes away from it, lips tight. "Yeah, yeah, I know," I snap at it, the wrapper, all of the wrappers, and I _do_ know, I do know all the bad things their nutrition labels have to tell me, of course I do, I always check the nutrition labels when I buy food. "Give me a few minutes."

I get to my feet – oh, the middle of me feels like a cannonball – and fill a mug of coffee, some _way_ -after-ten coffee, and I drink it, even though I do so too fast to really enjoy it, even though I burn my tongue and my throat. It's the principle of the thing. I find myself looking at my turntable, at the Michael Jackson record sitting there, waiting to be played, and I pivot away from it and stare at the mess of plastic and crumbs at my feet.

When the coffee's gone, I go into my bathroom and stand over the toilet and poke the back of my throat with my toothbrush until I have all of the chips and all of the candy and all of the coffee out of me again, and then I carefully wash the toothbrush, brush my teeth, and wash my face. I return to my bedroom with one of the plastic bags I have for my bathroom's wastebasket and I gather up all the crinkling wrappers and bags and stuff them into it, into the bigger bag, and I squeeze it small and tie it closed and take it down the hall to the storage room, bringing my French press and mug with me. I throw the trash away, wash my dishes, and grab a little vacuum, a handheld sort of vacuum, from one of the higher shelves – I have to use a stepstool to reach it – and go back to my room, vacuum the crumbs from my pretty white rug, and walk down the hall again to get on the stepstool again and put the vacuum back in its place. And then I go to bed.

My sheets are cold. Normally, I read before I go to sleep, and I like the book that I'm reading now – a novel about a group of teenage girls, friends, at a boarding school for spies. I just reached a part where the main girl meets a boy she likes, and now she has to lie to him about everything. It's a silly novel, a ridiculous novel, but I like it. I don't read it today, though. I never feel like reading after a morning like this. There's nothing good in me after a morning like this, and I don't want to have to live with it, all of this _nothing good,_ for long. I just want to sleep. So I do. It comes easily. Sleep likes me.


	6. Done

  **July**

Fangtasia has never seemed so ominous. And I have seen Fangtasia during some pretty dire times.

Pam parks by the employee entrance, as she usually does, and gets out of the car before I realize the engine's off. I unbuckle my seatbelt, though a part of me resists. That part of me, it wants to stay strapped to this seat in this car, because if I stay out here forever, I'll never be in _there._ Inside ominous Fangtasia. With Eric. But that part of me is all instinct, all emotion. It can't see reality. Or it refuses to.

Pam opens my door, which she never, ever has. I slide out of the car and, once I'm standing, roll my shoulders and slip my hands into the pockets of my coat so it fits me more snugly, even though the July night is as warm as you'd expect. My fingers find my phone in my left pocket. In my right, they find a little box and a little tube. Cigarettes and a lighter. I should have found a moment in Bon Temps to throw those out, I suppose.

Pam clamps her hand on my shoulder and steers me to the door, not pushing or pulling me, but moving me in a way that doesn't give me a lot of choice in the matter. "Unless he asks you a question, keep your mouth shut," she mutters, her voice just a bit too deep. "No smart-ass answers, no smart-ass _facial_ _expressions_ _,_ none of your emo-preteen bullshit. Do you hear me?"

I look up at her. She must take that as an answer, as a _yes,_ because she doesn't ask again, but really all I'm doing is trying to read her. One way or another. And it's not hard. Her face is mostly in shadow, with just a streetlight shining orange over us, but I don't need to see details to see how stony it is. And her head is tilted down, her glimmering eyes locked on the door the way I've seen them locked on people, certain people. The magister comes to mind. Nan Flanagan, too. Russell Edgington . . . Pam's looking at the door the way she looks at a threat. At a fight waiting to happen.

This fight won't be hers, is the thing.

Pam pulls open the door without taking her hand from me, though she shifts it down to my back to press me ahead of her, and I step into the dark back hallway of my so-called home, but I only take one step more after that, because Eric is here.

He's down the hall a bit. He's been pacing, probably. He's not now. He's still now. And he's mostly just a shape, in this light. But I can see the glint of his eyes, just like I could with Pam's outside, and now I'm thinking about pictures I've seen of animals at night, of predators, nearly invisible in some deep shadow except for their eyes, latched onto some oblivious little creature that was only ever going to be prey.

Eric's eyes are latched onto me, of course.

The door shuts behind me, maybe harder than normal. The _bang_ echoes in a strange, cold way, and my shoulders have curled forward, haven't they? I try to force them back, I really do. But my muscles don't care what I want right now. I don't think they trust my mind much anymore.

For what feels like an hour, none of us says anything, and then Eric's eyes flash to the side, to Pam – for a split second, I feel relieved, like someone strong was holding me under water and finally let me up to breathe – and then he turns away and Pam's hand is tight on my shoulder and she's moving me forward again, and I'm back beneath the surface.

Pam and I follow Eric into the bar, a space not built for just three people. Not built for yelling at a twelve-year-old, certainly. If I've done wrong, Eric usually deals with me in his office or my room, never here. But . . . I get it, I think. I can feel Eric, just a little, like I usually can if he's really, really feeling something, and Eric – he's vibrating. Making the air vibrate. There's a lot inside of him, and even though he might not feel that in the same way I feel it, I can't imagine he wants to be in a small space right now. He has too much in him to be in a small space.

If nothing else, he'll want plenty of room to pace.

As if to prove that last part right, Eric strides to the other side of the room, and in the meantime Pam directs me to a couch and all but plants me there. She looks at Eric's back – not at me – before turning away. She doesn't go for the door. Instead, she walks to the bar and settles there, not sitting, just leaning back against it. Watching Eric.

This is wrong. Pam staying here. It's wrong, the way Eric bringing me into the bar instead of the usual rooms is wrong. Pam doesn't discipline me, not beyond _Don't do that_ or something that means the same. That's not what she is to me, it never has been. Eric is my guardian. Eric handles these things. Alone.

But here Pam is, albeit on the sidelines. And with the coming-into-the-bar thing, at least I could figure out a reason. I can't with this, I don't understand, but I know, I'm _certain_ it's a bad sign, and I draw my coat tighter around me. Only then I notice how _bare_ my legs are in these stupid tiny shorts, and so I roll out of my coat and drape it over my knees. But this tank top lets my belly button show, and suddenly I hate that, and I tug the coat further up my legs and bundle it up a bit to cover those few inches of torso. My calves are still showing, as are my shoulders and neck and arms, but this is the best I can do.

This really is a ridiculous outfit.

Eric's coming back.

He stops a few paces – his paces, not mine – from my table. All of my life, Eric's stressed the importance of eye contact. In the Western world, it's generally a way to show you're paying attention, a way to come off as confident, sincere, in control. A way to get what you want, even – a tool. Not that I was ever supposed to make eye contact with Eric with that last possibility in mind. Not that I would ever think I could get away with it.

My point is, Eric prefers I look at him during our conversations, even the unpleasant ones – especially the unpleasant ones, at least at their most important parts. But I can't look at him right now. I hate that, I hate that . . . that _weakness_ in me, _this_ weakness in me, but it's here, it's a fact, and my head stays down, my eyes stay on my hands. My hands, folded together, strangely serene. They don't even look like mine, come to think of it.

Eric begins.

"If at any point in this conversation you lie to me, I will know, and I will make you wish very much that you hadn't." His voice is low, far too low, and gravelly. It's one of his worst voices. "Do you understand?"

I don't, not fully, because _I will make you wish very much that you hadn't_ isn't a very detailed threat. But it's effective. That's all that matters, that's all he wants me to confirm. So I nod.

"Have you sneaked out of Jessica's before?"

"Yes."

"How many times?"

My tongue has trouble forming the word, trouble pushing it out. "Five."

Since my head's down, I don't see in detail how Eric reacts to this. I only see what the corner of my eye can make out. The big picture. In the big picture, Eric stays where he is and makes no major gestures. But I know I can't trust that image. Eric might have stiffened, his expression might have changed. Or, maybe he _did_ actually stay completely still. He's good at concealing his thoughts, his feelings, so maybe he didn't react to my answer in any physical way whatsoever. That's possible. And meaningless. Because there's no way I can tell Eric I've disobeyed him five times and not affect him, even if he doesn't want to let it show. Yet.

It _does_ show a little, though, when he talks again. There's a new, unique sort of strain to his tone, something like the screeching sound tires make if a car turns too fast. "Five?"

I watch the stranger's hands in my lap tighten their hold on one another, almost cautiously, as if they're not sure if they need to be scared or not. "Yes."

And now, now Eric moves – enough, I mean, for it to show up in the big picture. He turns away – no, half-turns away, so he faces the wall to my right, and he takes one step forward, just one, and then there's another snap of movement – him jabbing his hand at the ground, I think – and now Eric's asking, still in the dangerous sort of _quietly_ , "And was it always to do this? To meet and get drunk with idiot children you don't know? That _I_ don't know?"

"I didn't –" No, _no,_ I press my lips together.

But Eric snaps, "What?" and so I have to finish. My hands sort of seize against each other. No more caution, no more uncertainty. They're nervous now, and definitely mine.

"I didn't get drunk," I say.

"You didn't get drunk?" Eric takes another step, this one towards me, and my spine bends forward like a spoon in a magic trick. _"That's_ your defense?" he asks – hisses, he's hissing now.

"It's not a defense. I'm just – you said I got drunk, and I didn't. I drank, but I didn't get drunk."

"Oh, I see. And seeing as you are _twelve years old_ , you undoubtedly have excellent judgement when it comes to your level of _sobriety_."

I dig the nails of my intertwined fingers into the soft skin between my knuckles. _You let me drink in Europe!,_ a small, angry voice shouts from my insides. It's a stupid voice, a childish voice, a voice that should know – like the rest of me – that Eric allowing me a small glass of wine with dinner a handful of times while supervised is not the same, not _nearly_ the same as what I've been doing in Bon Temps. Even if what I've been doing in Bon Temps really isn't that bad. And it's _not._ I could have been doing worse. Lots of kids do.

_You're supposed to be better than them, though. And don't you want to be?_

"Answer my question. Was it always to do this?"

Now Eric is being a bit louder, a bit harsher, as if I've been _refusing_ to answer him, and that makes all the worse my having to say, "What do you mean?" which I _do_ have to, because my mind has suddenly become annoyingly, infuriatingly incapable and I can't remember what he first asked.

"Were you always sneaking out of Jessica's," he says, in a way like dripping lava, "to meet with these people and drink?"

"Yes."

A long pause, during which I feel Eric's eyes on me. They're two swords stabbing my skull. "Who supplied the alcohol?"

Oh, God. "Different people." The truth.

"Including you?"

I huff out a shaky sigh – no, it pulls itself from me, fleeing. "Tw-twice."

Goddamn it, _goddamn it!_ That stutter, that _stupid_ stutter catches me by surprise and just sounds _wrong,_ like when a record skips, and my anxiety, my discomfort is suddenly rushed over and drowned out by a flood – irrationally strong, I know it even in the moment – of anger at myself, because I _stuttered._ I hate, hate, _hate_ when I stutter, especially to Eric, I hate it so much, I hate how cowardly, how _small_ it sounds –

"So on top of everything else," Eric says, and, _click,_ the anger is gone, vanished completely, leaving only my buzzing nerves and twisting stomach again. "The disobedience, the deception . . . putting yourself in a vulnerable position in the _daytime_. . . You stole from me as well?"

I close my eyes.

An instant later, a circle of iron claps across the back of my neck – only of course it's only Eric's hand, but really, really, what's the difference? – and Eric shakes me, not hard, he might not even mean to do it, but I'm jerked back and forth and I whimper and Eric's face is inches from mine, and I accidentally meet his eyes and they freeze my blood and Eric snarls, "Do you have any idea what I have done to people who have _STOLEN FROM ME?!"_

Those last three words blow over my face, causing stray hairs to tremble, and slam into my eardrums, too, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough that I miss myself whimpering again, more this time, more _pathetically_ this time, and my leg is folded into my chest now, muscles tight, driving my heel into the couch and trying to push me back, away from Eric, but it's pointless because he won't let go, he's right in front of me and his fangs are probably out and he _won't let go –_

" _Eric."_

Pam said that. Pam's still here. I forgot about her. Or maybe not, maybe my brain just became too busy and didn't have enough room to think about her, but maybe that _is_ forgetting, I don't know, I don't know, I just know I want Eric to let go of me, I want that very much.

My hand is on his. On his, on the back of my neck. I lift mine off, but just by an inch, because the room is so still now and I don't want to move more than that.

Eric lets me go. Not right after Pam speaks, some time goes by after that, his head so close to mine and my ears ringing and my body in his control, but then the iron collar snaps off and Eric straightens to his full height and steps back, and I press my own, tiny hand against my neck. I have to weave through my hair to do it. My hair – Did Eric shove it out of his way to grab me? Or did he just grab me over it? Probably the former. He likes my hair. He'd never want to damage it.

His head is a thousand miles above mine now, and I stare at my knee, still folded into my body. Eric turns away, walks away. My heart is pounding, I feel every beat, my body jumps with each one. It's working hard, my heart, because it has to send all the ice through my body, and I'm sure it sounds to Eric like someone is inside me and beating on a drum. Beating out a _drumroll_ on a drum. Drumrolls always come before big things, don't they? What's coming, then?

My head's low but my gaze is up enough to find Pam's lovely stilettos. _That was why,_ something whispers to me. _That was why she stayed here._

I’m not sure how long it is before Eric talks again. He paces back and forth in front of the couch a few times, but _a few_ could be three or ten, I'm too occupied with my knee and my heartbeat to tell, but he _does_ talk again, not yelling or bellowing but certainly snapping, snapping and still pacing, the words almost sound like afterthoughts.

"Exactly what sort of things were you doing with these kids?"

"Talking," I say, surprisingly easily, though my tongue feels odd, feels _off,_ like it moved over a centimeter and my mouth hasn't adjusted to the change. My ears might have moved, too, they're not hearing quite right, my mouth sounds farther away than it is. "And listening to music."

"Were there drugs?"

I think alcohol counts as a drug, but of course Eric knows about the alcohol, and cigarettes have nicotine and nicotine is a drug but I don't think people are usually talking about cigarettes when they talk about drugs, but still, still I say, "Cigarettes," because I'm not sure.

"Yes, I know there were cigarettes, I smell them on you. Anything else?"

"No."

"Have you had sex with anyone?" he says – only he wouldn't say that, so I have to ask _What?_ and he says, "Have you. Had _sex_. With anyone?" and I blink and I think my eyebrows come together, yes, I feel them do that.

"Of course not."

"I need to know if you have, do you understand me?"

"I haven't," I say, thinking that I've only gotten my period seven times, that I barely need a bra, and do people have sex when they're as young as I am? Should I want to? I don't want to, not with Dylan or any of those people, I like how Dylan looks at me when I dance because I like that I can make him do that, but I don't want more than that, more than him looking. But maybe that's wrong. Maybe there's something wrong with me, one more thing wrong with me, and Eric has stopped, he's stopped pacing, he's looking at me, I feel it, his eyes are still swords. Cold swords. Maybe made entirely of ice. Most parts of Eric are, maybe all of them, and I bet that's nice.

He talks and I listen.

"What have you been _thinking?_ All of these times – _five_ of them – what could possibly have been going through your head that made you think what you were doing was in any way a good idea? In any way good for you? You had to have known I would find out eventually! If nothing else – if you didn't get hurt, if someone didn't _hurt_ you – you had to have known I would find out! That you would end up in some version of this moment! That _I_ would! Do you see where you have gotten us? Do you understand the position you've put me in? Had you committed a _fraction_ of these indiscretions, had you _only_ lied _,_ _only_ sneaked off, _only_ drank with strangers, it would call for serious consequences. But you have done all of those things and more, and you have done them _multiple times!_ You have _endangered yourself_ multiple times! And _I_ have to figure out what to do about that! _I_ have to punish you for that! And I'm finding it difficult to think of a way to do so that is proportional to your actions and yet doesn't, in all likelihood, result in you hating me for the rest of your human life! _That_ is where you have gotten us, Annika. Well done."

Eric yelled during that. On and off. A lot at the end, loudly at the end, except for those last two sentences, those were quiet. Not good quiet, he sort of hissed and growled, all at once. He moved while he spoke, but not a lot, not in the big picture. He came towards me a bit, threw an arm out, that sort of thing. And me, I've sat here, staring at my knee, only it's my knee and my hands, because the hands clasped together on top of the knee at some point, and the hands, my hands, they're taking all of this worse than I, clinging to each other, trembling, stark white, bloodless. Terrified. I'm not terrified. I _have_ terror, that's inside of me, sure, but I don't feel it, does that make sense? I don't feel anything, not anything, except maybe I'm tired. Is that right? It's something like that. I'm tired, and I want it done. This. The punishment. I want it done so it can be over and I can listen to music alone and sleep.

A while later: "I have been patient these last few months," and Eric is still speaking quietly, but it's not the hiss-growl quietly, it's less ferocious, and I think Eric may be tired-or-something-like-that, too. "You know I have. You have wanted nothing to do with me, you shrink from my touch, you are made angry by my mere entrance. You have rebuffed every one of the _many_ attempts I have made to find out what is wrong with you, to find out how I can make things better, and I, in turn, have been patient. Through every eyeroll, every passive-aggressive comment, every brooding silence – even when it went against my instincts, even in moments when I would have resorted to force with anyone else – I. Have been. _Patient_. Because I had to assume it was a phase. That you would come out of it in time. And because you do not have the easiest life, Annika, and believe it or not, I am aware of that, and I try to make it easier for you when I can, because I –" He stops there and doesn't start again for a minute, maybe literally, maybe more than that. Maybe not, though. He's closer than he was before, I'm within his reach, but then again, I always am.

"I am _done_ being patient," is what he says when he finally continues. "You have cost us both that luxury. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with you. I need to think." Then, almost in a mutter, almost to himself, "Had I, at your age, behaved this way for my father, been this _insolent_ . . . he would have beaten me until I bled."

Eric turns away as he finishes saying this, and maybe that – him turning – has something to do with what happens to me. But no, I don't think so. I think his words are entirely to blame. One in particular. It lands on me and snags something, something that's been draped over me like a sheet – no, a net, it's a net – and snaps it, viciously and immediately, and I'm free, and I'm _feeling,_ everything swells up inside of me – hurt, regret, stupid fucking love, and yes, terror – but nothing so much as the anger. The _rage._ And my rage, it's always been the typical, burning sort of rage. It isn't this time. This time, I take after him, after Eric – my rage is pure, stony ice.

"You're not my father," I say to his back, my voice cold and perfectly, perfectly smooth, the ice rising within me, pushed up by all the other things fighting below it, fighting to burst into the world, but they have nothing on the rage, nothing at all.

Eric seems to have expected me to speak. I don't think he actually did, I don't know why he would have, but he just twists around so fast. His words come out almost immediately after mine. He doesn't yell, exactly. He's forceful. That's the best way to put it.

"And what do you think he would have done _to a slave?"_

That something outside of me. The snapped thing. The net. It falls off. Falls away. And so do the things inside of me. All of them. The ice. The things beneath it. Maybe organs and blood. I'm empty. I'm bare. Just like that. _Snap._

We look at each other, Eric and I. I don't know when he met my eyes. During, I think. Maybe at the end. I don't really see them. I don't try to. They're just swords, anyway. My gaze drifts down. Like it's latched to a balloon. Maybe I _am_ a balloon. A deflating balloon. I feel light like a balloon. So much so. My sight is blurred. Tears. From before, when it was icy. Not from now. I cry when I'm angry. Not when I'm a balloon. I blink some. My sight clears.

Eric is walking away. He talks. It sounds like echoes. "We'll continue this later. Get out of – Go to your room."

I'm on my feet. I floated there. Now I'm floating more. Floating away from the couch. Floating past chairs and tables and Pam and the bar, floating through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. Floating down the hall. Floating into my room, where I close myself in before floating to my bed, and there, only there and only then, do I sink, sink, sink to the floor. Balloons never stay floating long, do they? The air trickles out of them, sometimes quickly and sometimes not, but always, always, you can't stop it. And then the balloon isn't even a balloon anymore. It's just a cold piece of crumpled plastic, lying limp and alone, and you wonder why you even got the balloon in the first place. And the poor limp balloon can't make an argument for itself, because it's empty and done. Yes, that's the best word for it, isn't it? Done.

Later, much later, I take a shower for forever, and it's only about halfway through that when I stop pretending to be a balloon – _pop_ – and feel what I have to. I don't see it coming, but when it does, I press my head against the wet white wall and cry. Then I slide to the wet white floor and cry. For so many reasons. Crying helps with none of them, but I cry anyway, because I'm scared and I'm lonely and I'm hurt _,_ it just _hurts,_ and because I don't know who I have to be brave for anymore.


	7. Surprise

**A.N.: Thank you to everyone who reached out during my unannounced, unplanned hiatus. All is well, and I so appreciate your ongoing interest in Annika. I hope you're ready to jump back in. Enjoy.**

**. . . . .**

**Present Day**

The computer lab is mostly empty. A pair of girls my age – they might be a little older – sit giggling at a screen in the corner opposite mine, and a man with dreadlocks and a tie types rapidly into a computer a few desks away from them, but that's it, that's all the people here. Other than me, of course, settled at one of the three most private computers in the lab. These three computers – I'm at the one in the middle – are tucked against the one spot in the wall that actually  _is_ wall, entirely wall, not wall-and-glass. A never-ending window stretches around most of the room, for reasons I don't understand. All you can see from inside here is the main part of the library – in other words, shelves and strangers passing by – and all you can see from  _outside_  here is a dimly-lit computer lab and strangers staring at screens, and I can't imagine that's particularly entertaining or informative. So, it's pointless, that never-ending window. And I don't like it. It makes me feel like I'm in an exhibit at a museum, and it makes me question my privacy when I sit in the wrong place.

But, like I said – I'm in the right place. The wall behind me here is real wall, because that's the part of this room that intersects with part of the librarian's office. No one can sneak up behind me and see my screen.

Not that a lot of people are trying to do that. Most people couldn't care less what I'm doing, obviously, but –  _some_  people care. At least two. And if Eric or Pam ever happened to suspect me of anything, and happened to follow me to the library, and happened to see the sort of thing that's on my screen right now . . . The results could be bad. Deadly, even.

If  _most_ people glanced at my computer, though, they wouldn't think anything of it. All that's on the screen is an email, just an email, and it's a rather  _short_  email, even. Especially when you consider that I've been working on it for over an hour.

_**J,** _

_**Sorry I haven't emailed you lately. I just don't have much to talk about. Not much happens to me. E doesn't let much happen to me.** _

_**I changed my hair last month, so I guess that's something. It's four inches shorter now, with bangs across the forehead and long layers and blonde highlights. Well, blonder highlights, I suppose. And some lowlights, too, of what the stylist called "ash blonde," which just looks grey to me, but I like it.** _

_**I finally got** _ **Sheer Heart Attack** _**on vinyl. I don't know if I'm going to get** _ **A Night at the Opera** _**next or something else. Maybe that will be the topic of my next email.** _

_**Like I said. Not much happens to me.** _

_**I did look at the website of that band you said you were considering one or two emails ago. I liked the singer. She's a great performer. I know you like those.** _

_**That's all I have. I hope you're well.** _

_**\- A** _

It occurs to me, upon rereading the message, that telling Jack about changes I've made to my hair is – for more reasons than one – incredibly, absurdly idiotic. I delete that entire paragraph. Doing so takes the email from  _rather_ short to just short, but I'll have to live with that . . . I add an  _I think_ to my  _She's a great performer_ comment, because I don't want to sound as if I consider myself an expert on such things, particularly not in an email to someone who  _is_ an expert on such things. Then I change  _Sorry I haven't emailed you lately_ to  _I realize I haven't emailed you lately,_ because apologizing can make you sound weak.

The last change I make, and only after considering it for a few seconds, is to delete the final sentence of my first paragraph –  _E doesn't let much happen to me._ In theory, Jack is the perfect person to complain about Eric to, but in practice . . . Well, Jack and I talked about Eric each of the (few) times we met in person – How could we not? – and whenever that happened, everything about Jack changed. His muscles would go rigid, he'd keep his head pointed straight forward, and his voice took on a tone that was soft on the surface but sharp,  _so_ sharp underneath, because if you use a tone like that you must want to cut something open.

It wasn't just what I saw and heard, though. I felt things, too. I could never read much of anything from Jack, since he's a vampire, but his loathing for Eric kept creeping out, brushing me with black, simmering hands, burning me in a way I've never felt before . . .

Something cold touches the skin just over my neckline, and an instant after I realize that, I realize it's my own hand. Ready to scratch out any emotions I'd like to spill from my body. I place that hand in my other and squeeze, hard.

Around the time my fingers have turned too red in some spots and too white in others, I pull my hands apart and press  _Send_. The email vanishes from the screen, replaced by a promise that my message has been sent. The tiny clock in the monitor's bottom-right corner tells me it's almost eight. Ginger will want to take me back to the club soon. Eric doesn't like me to be gone for more than a couple of hours.

I log out of this email account –  _demoniclilgoblin -_ an address I created just for emailing Jack, since Eric knows my normal email and can go through it anytime he wants. I sling my too-big, too-empty purse over my shoulder and head for the door, passing the two my-age-or-a-little-older girls, who are giggling again – or who are  _still_ giggling, rather. They've been doing it almost constantly, like fountains trickling water. It's an annoying sound.

I go automatically to the fiction section, even though I still have my spy novel back at the club. I wanted to come to the library mainly to email Jack – I'd never risk doing so on my laptop – but if I come back without new books, Eric will be suspicious. So, I'll find something, pick up Ginger from the magazine section, and we'll go.

My oversized purse bounces gently against my hip. Something about it is like a tap on the shoulder, and my plan changes, almost on its own: I'll find something, and I'll go to those vending machines that are too close to the restrooms. Then I'll pick up Ginger from the magazine section. And we'll go.

. . . . .

"You gotta try one of those Java Chillers from Sonic, now that you're drinkin' coffee," Ginger says –  _chirps,_ that's a good word for it – as we walk through the library's parking garage. It's brightly lit, the garage, and this is a good part of town (so I'm told), but the library is about to close and most of the cars are gone. The garage, a big, multi-leveled place meant to hold a lot of things, does not wear emptiness well. The  _click-clack_ of Ginger'sboots echo around us for something like forever.

Ginger, however, doesn't seem particularly affected by our environment. "They're espresso and ice cream all blended together, topped off with a big ole dollop of whipped cream, and they come in all different flavors. I always get the caramel, I like that best, but I've tried mocha too. It almost was as good. There's a third one you can get, but I can't remember what it is. Some sorta nut, maybe? Not pistachio, but one of them weird ones . . . Anyway, how 'bout we swing by and get a couple?"

"If I'm going to eat something as caloric as ice cream, it needs to be  _good_ ice cream." As I say this, my free hand traces a seam of my purse, which – aside from my wallet, my cell phone, and the two books I checked out – is filled with a variety of crinkly-plastic-wrapped foods that are quite caloric and quite  _not_ -good, quality-wise. But . . . okay, truthfully, only part of my mind dwells on that. The rest of my mind is at a gelateria in Milan, occupied with an immense scoop of the flavor Eric said translated the closest to cookies-and-cream but which was so,  _so_ much better,  _ridiculously_  better, than any cookies-and-cream I'd ever had before. When was that? Late January? I was wearing my new leather gloves, I remember that, I had to take them off so the gelato wouldn't drip on them . . . Yes, it must have been late January. We were in Sweden through December, then all around Central Europe through  _most_ of January, but we arrived in Italy a few days before February. I was excited about Italy, because Eric – in his way – was excited about Italy. He told me I'd like Florence the best. He was right. But I never found gelato like that gelato in Milan.

"You don't mean like a pool, do ya?"

Milan and its incredible gelato whirl out of my mind like water down a drain. Like Ginger pulled a plug. "What?"

"You said  _somethin' as chloric as ice cream._ Are you tellin' me that the same stuff that's in pools is in –"

"Oh, dear God . . .  _Caloric. Cuh_ -loric, Ginger, not . . . There's no chlorine in ice cream, Ginger. Or – I don't know, maybe there is, but it's not . . . an  _ingredient_."

"Why would it be in it if it's not an ingredient?"

I almost explain to her that chlorine is an element, but decide not to, partially because I'm only about seventy percent sure I'm remembering that correctly (my science lessons have been focused on physics lately, and, also, chemistry bores me immensely), but mostly because the idea of discussing anything remotely scientific with Ginger sounds like the beginning of a joke. "Good point," is what I say. "Silly me."

"Hm."

We're almost to the far side of the garage, where Ginger's beat-up little white car waits for us in its ever-patient, somehow-hopeless way. The car exit is to our right, a giant gap in the wall revealing a yellow-lit piece of the street outside. A month ago, you could hear crickets chirping from here, but they're all gone now. I wonder what happens to them when autumn comes, if they hibernate like some animals do, or if they all just die. What a sad little life that would be.

Ginger is talking again. "Well, anyway. I love them Java Chillers. And they  _are_ good ice cream. There's no harm in you givin' 'em a try. Whatdya say, wanna stop on the way back?"

"No, thank you."

In an effort to avoid the pillar to the right of her parking spot, Ginger parked several inches over the left parking-spot line, stealing room from the space beside her. I almost point this out, but Ginger shakes her head, earrings jangling, and tells me, "Annie, honey, if you never try new things, you're gonna miss out on a lot of fun in life."

"Thank you, Ginger. If I've never said so, I greatly value your advice."

"Well, that's awfully sweet of you –"

"She's nothing if not sweet."

I jump a little, because this interruption comes from a new voice. Ginger, meanwhile, shrieks, and that sharp little sound slices through the parking garage and stabs back at us as an echo just as my mind comprehends that the new voice is Eric's and that Eric is leaning against the pillar beside Ginger's car. The corner of my guardian's mouth curls up, just a tiny bit, and before I know what's happening I feel an equally tiny rush of warmth deep inside me. Affection. I can't help it. For most of my life, the greatest prize I knew was a pleased look from Eric. I'm programmed to like him most when he looks like that.

Ginger presses a hand to her chest as her shriek dies around us. "Oh, Lord! You nearly scared me to death!"

"Sorry, Ginger." Eric slides his eyes to me and says, in a softer voice, "I need to speak with you."

Normally, Eric saying that would do little more than annoy me, but  _normally_ he'd be saying it at the club. He isn't. He came to meet me elsewhere to say it, almost certainly going out of his way to do so. "Is something wrong?" I ask.

"No. I'll explain. Come, I'm parked outside. Ginger, take the rest of the night off."

_Parked?_  Eric never drives me anywhere anymore. When he has to take me somewhere, we always fly. Neither of us has to talk when we fly.

I go to Eric, and Ginger takes a step towards him, too. "Are you sure you don't need me for any –"

"I am." Eric turns for the street. I walk beside him, my steps – as ever – too short. Eric has to slow his strides for me to keep up. I can't stand that he has to do that.

Ginger drives past us just as we reach the street. She honks, we both ignore her, and her little white car zips away.

"Does she drive that fast when you're in the car?" Eric asks as she turns a corner.

"I've never noticed." I think she probably does, but I haven't ever actually checked the car's speed, and it's hard to be certain if Ginger drives faster than people should drive when the only other drivers I'm ever with are vampires. Vampires don't care about speed limits. Vampires don't crash cars.

Eric leads me down the street. I grip the strap of my purse as we walk, pinning it against my shoulder while my free hand stretches across my stomach – subtly, I hope – to keep the bag still. I can't hear the junk food crinkling around inside of it, but Eric might be able to. "What's going on?"

"I'm taking you for coffee. Or for something to eat, if you'd like."

It's not an offer. He's stating a fact. "Why?"

"I told you. I need to speak with you." He glances down, catching my eyes on him. "Nothing is wrong, Annika, I promise," he says as I look away. "In fact, I'll think you'll be pleased."

"By what?"

"Let's sit somewhere first. Would you like coffee or food? Both, perhaps?"

"Just coffee. Please." I want to point out that Eric would save time by starting to explain things now, but it wouldn't do any good. He's clearly decided our sitting somewhere is of the upmost importance to this conversation, a requirement that doesn't really strike me as going hand-in-hand with him giving me news I'll find pleasing.

_If he really cared about pleasing me, he wouldn't be making me go somewhere with him just for a chat._

_No matter that him doing exactly that would have been the highlight of my week not even a year ago._

The highlight of my month, in all likelihood. Eric picking me up by surprise to take me out, to sit and talk, to give me his full attention? I would have been thrilled, I would have been  _ecstatic_  . . . Eight months ago. Just eight months ago.

Stupid little girl.

I miss her sometimes.


	8. A Proposition

Steam flows over my face as I spin my mug around, slowly, trying to keep the coffee inside as still as possible. Almost like I'm tricking it. _No, dear, everything's fine, I promise. Be still_. The steam's probably opening my pores. I don't think that's good, when you have makeup on. I sort of remember reading something about that in a magazine.

 "That nail polish is a good shade for you." Eric is across from me at this all-too-little table, the sort of elevated table so many cafés have. I'm sitting on a hard, wooden something that's more barstool than chair, but really not either. My feet are a long way from touching the floor. That bothers me more than it should. "I don't see you wear red often."

I half-raise one hand to study my nails. Eric's right, this deep, almost-rusty red isn't a color I'd normally choose, but I read that red is a _power color_ , so when Ginger took me shopping last week I slipped into a cosmetics store and slipped this polish into my bag. And I like how it looks on me, especially with my tan – my _fake_ tan. I always feel like I have to specify that it's fake, even though I don't like saying so, because _fake_ seems to imply _bad_ and I think my tan, while mild, is actually a pretty good tan. A pretty good tan that works well with rusty red. Apparently.

I wish Eric hadn't complimented the polish, though. I like things better when he doesn't like them. "Thank you."

We're in the corner of this café, a local business, not something from a chain. The concrete floor is covered here and there by beige woven rugs, and our table – all the tables, plus the bar running through the middle of the room – are made from a not-pale, not-dark wood. Simple, the whole place is simple, and I like that, I suppose. The café is pretty busy, but there's still an empty table between Eric and me and the closest other customers, an old man and woman who are reading books and not talking.

Eric taps all four fingers on the table, one after the other. I only see this with my peripheral vision, because I'm back to playing the spinning game with my coffee. I'm not great at it, truthfully. The coffee trembles no matter how gently I try to spin the mug. Maybe I'm not so great a trickster as I'd like to be. As some people are.

So I give up on the game, and I wrap both hands around the mug and turn my attention to other things that aren't Eric. Two men, for instance, who I think are on a date – they're at a table in a shadowy corner, leaning close to one another, smiling like they have a secret. And at the far end of the bar, there's a young, overweight woman curling over her laptop, forehead scrunched in a way that'll give her wrinkles. To my right, across the room, the barista with an eyebrow piercing wipes the counter with a stained white rag. I decided she was a woman when I ordered my coffee, but now I think she – he? They? Surely not _it?_ – might be a man, at least biologically. I watch as he (or she or they or it) slides open a panel of the glass pastry display to reach in a tattooed arm and straighten an enormous muffin. Oh, the pastry display – it's impressive, I feel like I should acknowledge that. Its three shelves are absolutely packed with giant cookies, pretzels, muffins (as mentioned), cupcakes, cheesecakes . . . basically everything you might expect from a pastry display.

Unless you'd expect a cinnamon bun. For whatever reason, the café evidently has none of those. Of course, I wouldn't get one if there were – the U.S., or at least Louisiana, doesn't know how to make cinnamon buns. By which I mean Louisiana doesn't know how to make cinnamon buns the way Sweden makes cinnamon buns. The cinnamon buns here, they're too big, too cake-like and sugary, and really, I don't think you can say they're even in the same family as the cinnamon buns in Sweden.

Any cinnamon bun I could get in Louisiana would probably contain an average of a billion or so calories, anyway.

"Are you hungry?"

Eric's eyebrows are up. He noticed where my eyes were. "No. Thank you." I shift in my seat and sip my coffee. It's sub-par coffee. Far too mild, a bit burnt.

"I heard you telling Ginger how _caloric_ ice cream is, in the parking garage. You're not trying to diet, are you?"

"You order all of my meals. You'd know if I were dieting."

"You shouldn't be thinking about calories, not at your age. Not at your size, for that matter."

"I'm _not_ thinking about calories." The lie flows so naturally from my lips that I feel an echo of genuine anger at Eric's suspicion. "It was just an excuse for Ginger. So I didn't have to eat cheap ice cream from a fast-food place."

Eric taps all four fingers again, _tap-tap-tap._ All four fingers, but only three beats, like when a horse runs. I wonder why hands and horses work like that. It's the sort of thing I would have brought up to Eric, at one time.

"What books did you check out?" he asks after a minute.

_This is_ not _what we came here to talk about._ "Um, one's a novel. Something newer, and YA, you wouldn't know it."

"YA?"

"Young adult."

"And the others?"

"Just one other. A collection of six modern plays."

"Which plays?"

" _The Glass Menagerie,_ and . . . something by Arthur Miller, but it's not _The Crucible_. I can't remember the names of the rest."

"Didn't I take you to see a production of _The Glass Menagerie_ a couple of years ago? In New Orleans?"

"That was _A_ _Streetcar Named Desire._ "

"Mm . . . You like Tennessee Williams?"

"Yes."

He says nothing, because this is the part where he would like me to elaborate. I sip my coffee. I stare at my coffee. I sip my coffee again.

Eric leans back in his seat – which can't be easy, since the back of it is maybe six inches high – and stretches his leg out on the floor below us. He can't stretch it far, since these barstool-chairs are so much higher than normal, but his foot still crosses over into my half of the table. Or, under-table. Whatever. "Well, speaking of plays . . . I've found a new theatre class for you."

My eyes fly from the mug to Eric – well, to Eric's hand, resting on the table.

"This one is run by a community theatre," he continues, "which I know is questionable, but it is organized and taught by a retired stage actress evidently looking to . . . _give back_. She is from Louisiana, but she spent most of her career in Chicago. Her credits are quite extensive, and impressive. She was nominated for a Jeff Award in the nineties, actually."

I take another drink of coffee – is the mug trembling? I may be imagining that – and feel wetness in my mouth without really tasting anything.

Eric, after a moment, says, "The Jeff Awards honor excellence in Chicago theatre –"

"I know what the Jeff Awards are," I say sharply, too sharply, sharply enough for Eric's hand to tense. I lick my lips, draw in a breath, and start again. Cordially. "Thank you. But I don't want to take another theatre class."

"I thought you said you didn't like the first one because the teacher was inept."

"Yes."

"And now I've found a class with a teacher who seems quite capable."

"It wasn't _just_ the teacher. It was the kids, too. They were . . ."

_Different from me. Fascinated by me. Frightened by me. Frightening_ to _me._

_Normal._

". . . idiots."

"There will be different kids in this class."

"Yes, thank you, I realize that, but those kids will likely be idiots as well." _And fascinated and frightened and frightening and normal and different, different,_ different _from me._

"They'll almost certainly be idiots, dear, but you would be hard-pressed to find children your age who are not, by comparison, idiots. I've been telling you that for years. Nonetheless . . . it would be beneficial for you to spend time with them."

I smile. Smirk. I can't help it.

And Eric's next words come slower. More carefully. "I am well aware, Annika, that peer socialization is an area of your upbringing which I neglected to pay the proper attention. I have admitted that. I am trying to _amend_ that."

I'm not even spinning the mug, and my coffee is trembling. My hands are still around it. Maybe my heartbeat is the problem.

"You enjoy the theatre. And I think you would enjoy this class, perhaps quite a lot. I would like for you to consider it."

God, I _hate_ it when he makes comments like that, comments that aren't technically orders but which _certainly_ aren't requests. I finally look straight at him, lifting my chin to do so, because holding your head like that makes you seem more sure of yourself, and people are more likely to take you seriously if you're sure of yourself. Unless, of course, they think they know you _better_ than you know yourself, which . . . just sucks. "I appreciate your efforts. But I am no longer interested in taking a theatre class."

Eric's face sort of tightens. The muscles around his lips, especially, seem to constrict, though you might not be able to notice if you didn't know him. The air between us is beginning to feel different, in a way that reminds me of static electricity. Irritation. Eric's. Oh, but no, no – _irritation_ isn't really right, is it? No, it's . . . _frustration_. That's closer, anyway. "What would you be interested in, then? What . . . group activity?"

I shrug.

"Annika, I am trying to give you something you want. Help me."

Now . . . in theory, I could explain to Eric that spending time with people my own age is no longer something I want. But I can't really do that. For starters, it isn't totally true. I _do_ want to spend time with people my own age, if I can understand them. The problem is that I've concluded I can't. Between my time in Bon Temps and my time in the first theatre class and my time sitting alone in my room gathering information from books and articles and movies, it's become clear to me that I simply don't _get_ people my own age, and, what's more, that I probably never will. I've researched it: People learn how to be around people by being around people from an early age. _Socializing_ from an early age. With their peers.

I've never had a peer.

I was never allowed that.

There would simply be no point telling Eric any of this, because, after all, he read multiple parenting books before and after purchasing me. He knows, he has _always_ known, that children are supposed to interact with other children, but still he _neglected to pay_ _the proper attention_ to that particular need of mine, and now here we are, and he wants to _amend_ things so I'll be all nice and simple for him again, but he _can't_ amend things, because things are too wrecked for that, it's too _late_ for that.

No, there's no point in my telling Eric any of this, any part of this, no point in trying to explain _anything_ to him. Not because he'd tell me I'm wrong. Because he already knows.

And, also? I don't fucking want to.

What I tell Eric, eventually, is, "I'll think about it and get back to you." Then I drink my coffee, and he watches me drink my coffee, and there's silence. Just at our table. The room buzzes around us, and we're quiet.

Until Eric folds his hands and says, "I have a proposition for you."

_Oh, thank God._ I was beginning to think he'd brought me here just to talk about the stupid theatre class, but no, there _is_ actually something that might actually matter, and he's finally getting to it, and maybe that means we're done with useless, empty, painful conversation. For tonight.

Eric's eyes flicker around above my head, double-checking the place, before landing back on mine. "What has Pam told you about Sookie? About her return?"

I got Pam to update me in Eric's office last night, when I knew he was out. "Sookie says she was away doing work for Bill Compton. You don't believe her."

"No, I don't. Her simply being _away_ doesn't explain why neither you nor I could sense anything from her for an entire year. And we were both around Bill shortly after Sookie disappeared. It's possible he could have deceived me, but you would have sensed if his distress was ingenuine, right?"

I pull the mug closer to me, feel its fading warmth against my chest. Eric's talking about the night he found out Sookie was gone, when he took me to her house in hopes of my sensing something useful. I couldn't, though, and . . . it wasn't a pleasant night.

Bill Compton showing up did nothing to help that, partly – not entirely, but partly – because of what he was feeling. What he was _genuinely_ feeling. "No. I mean, yes, I would have sensed it. Or – I wouldn't have sensed what I _did_ sense. Bill wasn't faking anything. He was distressed."

"Mm. Then he didn't know where she was then, and he's lying now. Presumably at Sookie's request. Which raises the question . . ." Eric lowers to a whisper. "What has Miss Stackhouse been doing all this time that she doesn't want the world, or _me_ , to know about?" He bobs his head an inch to the side. "I'm quite interested in the answer to that."

So am I, because Sookie was my friend before, and because I'm curious, but I still ask "Why?" because Eric is a much, much different person than I am.

"I'm curious."

Not _totally_ different, admittedly. "Why else?"

"Why do you think there's something else?"

"Because there always is."

"Not always." He studies me for what seems like a long, uncomfortable time. "Information is valuable. And powerful. The more I know about Sookie, the better."

"Is Sookie yours now?"

"Not yet."

"What does that mean?"

"She is resistant to the idea at present, but I am confident that, in time, she'll agree to it."

"Humans don't have to agree." My voice turns cool here. _Particularly_ cool – cold, in fact, cold enough to freeze the conversation.

If only for a few seconds. "I would prefer she did."

I pop my eyebrows. Lift the mug to my mouth. "That's considerate of you."

"Annika . . ."

"What?" I blink at him over the mug's rim. "I'm just saying, it's considerate." I take my sip, ignoring his glare, then gaze over at the barista and busy myself with further thoughts on gender identity until Eric speaks again.

"I want you to move in with her."

And my attention is all his again. "I'm sorry?"

"I want you to move in with Sookie."

I stare at him. He stares back at me, steadily, and doesn't amend himself, the way I expect, the way I think he _must,_ because how could what he's just said actually be what he wants to happen? _Move in with Sookie?_ With Sookie, in Bon Temps, the town I assumed Eric would keep me out of for the rest of eternity on principle alone? He wants me to go _live_ there now?

The word _Why?_ halfway-forms on my tongue, but I kill it before it can leave, because I try not to ask Eric questions I can answer on my own. I can do that with this one, I think. I just have to consider how my living with Sookie could benefit _him_.

Once I start from that point, it doesn't take me long to understand. Not even five seconds. "You want me to spy on Sookie."

Something glimmers in Eric's eyes, and I brace myself against that same sort of tiny, instinctive rush of affection I felt in the library parking garage. "I want you to . . . keep an eye on her."

"How is that different from spying?"

"It sounds better." He gives me the kind of half-smile you might give to someone who's in on your secret plan – a _co-conspirator_ – and I have to put more effort into stuffing down the damn instinctive-affection-surge. I don't smile back, at least, not halfway or more. I'm not sure I'm in on this plan yet.

Well, I'm not sure I'm in on it _willingly_.

"I want to find out where she's been," Eric says, "what she's been doing, why you and I couldn't sense her. Your abilities could prove useful in this. What's more, Sookie likes you. She asked about you the other night. It was the only thing she said to me that was completely without . . . exasperation."

"She's still angry at you for what happened with Edgington." I start that sentence intending for it to be a question, but by the time I reach the end, I realize it doesn't have to be. Of course Sookie is still angry. The last time she saw Eric, he pinned her to a table and drank her blood while she screamed. Doing so was part of a plan, yes, Eric was working to destroy Russell Edgington, and he eventually succeeded (more or less), which wouldn't have happened if he hadn't done what he did to Sookie, _and_ that all occurred a year ago, but . . . he pinned her to a table and drank her blood while she screamed.

"Yes, she seems to find that a difficult thing to move past," Eric acknowledges, the same way he might acknowledge a small flaw in something he was trying to sell. "But she will. And I believe I could aid the process, given the opportunity. That would be another benefit of you being at her house. I would have a good reason to visit."

"You _own_ her house."

"A _better_ reason. In Sookie's eyes." Eric hesitates, and – I don't know if it's a psychic thing or not – I feel the energy of the conversation shift. His tone softens, if you want further evidence. "It would also be good for you to spend some time away from the club. That was why I started sending you to Bon Temps in the first place, if you'll remember. That arrangement . . . did not go so well as I'd hoped. But I am ready to let you try again."

Naturally, Eric says this in the manner of someone demonstrating great generosity, someone who _hasn't_ spent the last minute spelling out the ways my living with Sookie could work to his advantage.

"You'd still come to Shreveport for your tennis lessons," he continues, "and for whatever new activity I – we select for you. I had Wi-Fi installed at Sookie's house, so your meetings with your tutors would go unaffected, as long as you packed your webcam. Oh, and I left a message for a new therapist. Once her office gets back to me, I'm sure we will be able to find a schedule that works for her as well as us." Another hesitation – another shift, even? "And it goes without saying that your bedroom at the club would be available to you anytime you wanted it."

My coffee is over three-fourths gone. I take a drink – it's too cool now, too – and almost start spinning the mug again, but decide instead to tilt it around on its base. I can't keep the coffee from trembling. Might as well make it swirl.

Eric says, "This would not be a permanent arrangement. Indefinite, perhaps, but . . . I am not making Bon Temps your home."

"Good to know," I mutter.

"What was that?" Eric asks in a tone that indicates he heard me perfectly well.

I bring the base of the mug back to the table. The coffee splashes up to try and escape, but it doesn't even come close. "Will I be allowed to go places?"

Eric inclines his head, just a centimeter. "What places?"

"Places. Stores, restaurants, whatever."

"How many stores and restaurants can Bon Temps have?"

"Some."

He props his elbows on the table and presses his fingers together, spreading them out while his palms stay separated, and I have the dim, quick urge to hold my hands the same way. I would do that sometimes, when I was little – mimic his movements, when they struck me. I'd forgotten that. "If Sookie knows where's you're going," Eric says.

"In the daytime?"

He might swallow. I think I see his neck move. If I'm right, I'm not sure what it means. "If Sookie is with you."

"You don't like me going out in the daytime because you're worried someone might try to take me, right? Someone hired by vampires to kidnap me while you're sleeping?"

"That's one possibility."

"If anyone like that comes after me, what's Sookie going to be able to do to stop them? She'd probably only be killed. Or she might be taken, too – Vampires will want her because she's a – because of what she is, right?" Vampires like telepaths and, it turns out, like fairy blood even more.

"Once word gets out, but –"

"Then there's also the possibility ofsomeone coming _just_ for her, and if that happens and I'm _with_ her, they might hurt me or take me, too. Or –"

" _Alright."_ Eric closes his eyes for a fraction of a second too long for me to call it a blink. "You don't have to have Sookie with you, but you may not be anywhere alone. You may go to public, busy places. Not places so busy that they are chaotic."

"I can spend time with other people? Other kids?" To be clear, I realize this is a strange thing to ask about, what with my being resigned to a probable fate as a social outcast. But it's the principle of the thing.

"I just told you I want you to spend time with other kids." We've reached the point of the conversation where Eric starts to sound very tired. He parts his hands, letting one fall to the table, where it rests with half-curled fingers.

"Even the kids from last summer?"

"Oh, the kids with whom you were corralled by the police?"

"Yes, them."

"You haven't spoken to those people in months."

"I might have, if all the contacts in my phone hadn't been deleted."

His half-curled fingers twitch towards his palm. "I do not want you anywhere, with any kids, without adult supervision."

"Any adult?"

"Any adult Sookie knows and approves of."

And now I'm out of questions. I just straighten my back and try to look like someone calmly pondering her new situation. Well, to _be_ someone calmly pondering her situation. The _calmly_ part is the only thing that's difficult.

This is no small thing. What Eric is doing here.

_What Eric is_ allowing _here_.

No, it's no small thing, no small thing at _all._ Eric is letting be away from the club. Letting me be away from _him_. Letting me _go_ _places_ , and even – if I ever were to want it – be with people, people he doesn't know! He hasn't given me freedom like this since Europe, and even there, he or Kristoffer Hagen were almost always with me, and if not, they were close by. In Bon Temps, I'd get to be out somewhere alone, sort of, except for strangers, which is close enough to being alone.

"I am extending you a great deal of liberty, Annika," Eric says, as if I don't realize that. "More than I am comfortable with. I am doing so for your sake, but –"

I don't think. "You're doing it so I can spy on Sookie."

Having, as I mentioned, passed the point in the conversation where Eric starts to sound very tired, it's in my best interest to be extra careful about what I say. I've not been doing that so well, and therefore I really shouldn't be as surprised as I am when Eric snarls – in a quiet, draw-no-attention way – "Do _not_ interrupt me, girl."

I exhale, then draw the breath all back in and tilt my head, waiting.

Once again, Eric closes his eyes for just a little too long, and when he opens them and starts talking, he's back to sounding mostly tired. Though not totally that. "If my sole agenda was gathering information on Sookie, allowing you such freedom with how and where you spend your time in Bon Temps would be a rather counterproductive measure, wouldn't it?"

I say nothing. It would, he's absolutely right, and some small part of me – no, a _major_ part – understands that Eric, regardless of his original motive for deciding I should live in Bon Temps, is granting me privileges that he does not, as far as I can tell, directly gain from. Privileges that are not easy for him to grant. Privileges I should be grateful for.

And really . . . it's not even that I'm not grateful. It's that I can't stand being grateful towards him.

Eric lets his gaze drift off, shaking his head a little. "Your wellbeing is as much a motive in this as hers."

Truly, I can't stand it.

"What about your wellbeing? Is it as much a motive as that?"

I could have gotten away with that comment three minutes ago.

Before I know what's happening, Eric has snatched the mug from my hands and brought it down – _thwack!_ – to my left, and in the same instant he snakes his left hand forward to grip the edge of the table to my right. Trapping me. I don't even try to hold his glare. I'd only break away from it. I hate that, I hope I won't always, but it's true right now, so I just stare at Eric's chest while he hovers over me like a gargoyle.

Stare at Eric's necklace, actually. He's wearing the one with the eagle talon, it dangles between us, and something about it, about _this_ , feels familiar. In a bizarre way. Like diving into the Arctic Ocean and remembering a time you had ice water. No, not ice water. More pleasant than that. Ice cream. Gelato.

Eric says, "I have somewhere to be." And he rises.

The door is behind me, and when Eric passes me by – I haven't stood, not yet – I sneak a glimpse at his face, though I don't mean to. It doesn't matter. He's not looking at me. His expression is mild. Relaxed, even. The expression of a man going about his evening.

The attention of strangers has settled on me, a thin layer of scratchy fabric. I could reach for my coffee. Take another drink, act like nothing's happened. Eric would have to choose between keeping a low profile and making a scene for the sake of his point. His instinct would be the latter. And then what happens?

_Everyone here sees a vampire drag a little girl from her seat. Someone pulls out their phone to record it. Maybe a security camera catches the whole thing. The footage finds its way to national news, international news. Witnesses give interviews detailing the incident, detailing their horror. The AVL scrambles to deal with the mess._

_One night, the police come for Eric._

I've gotten to my feet before my brain reaches "national news." I probably didn't have to. Eric can imagine all of those possibilities at least as well as I can, and I very much doubt he'd risk making them reality, no matter how pissed he is at me. But I won't risk making them reality, either. Nan Flanagan wanted Eric's statement for a reason. Anti-vampire sentiment is the highest it's been in the United States since right after the Great Revelation, I've read multiple articles confirming that fact. Politicians are running on anti-fang policies, _HUMANS ONLY_ signs are going up in store windows, and vampire-run businesses are constantly targeted by idiots with no lives or brains. Protesters show up at Fangtasia all the time these days, waving signs, chanting, finding increasingly ridiculous rhymes and puns for every vampire-related term they can think of. It's not a good time for vampires. I don't want to make it worse.

_And you don't want the police to come for Eric._

Well . . .

No. I don't. I can't even pretend I want that.

Eric stopped when he realized I wasn't following, and even though I'm coming now, he doesn't move, and seeing him there, I know if the police ever came for him, I would scream and try to throw things at them with my mind, and fight with my bare hands if I had to, and beg if I had to, but right now, I stomp past Eric like he doesn't exist, because even though I can't help but love him I really, really wish I could, because I also can't help but be so goddamn angry at him, and he _deserves_ for me to be angry at him, and maybe it wouldn't be so hard if the anger was all there was, if I didn't have a battle happening inside of me, all the time, every day, _constantly_ , it's so hard, it's so hard, it's _exhausting_.

I shove through the door and feel the strangers' minds slide away from me. I swipe both hands over my eyes because they're watery, and I'm looking at the mascara smudges on my fingers when Eric comes up beside me, but he's ahead of me just as quickly. He walks to his car. I do, too, but behind him. Far behind him. He doesn't slow his strides so I can keep up.


End file.
